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Conflicts of Interest, Culture Jamming and Subversive (S)ignifications: The High Fashion Logo as Locational Hip hop Artic
No full textIn 2012, a fashion line called “Conflict of Interest NYC” (C.O.I.) released a collection of three unisex t-shirts: each one took the brand name and/or logo of a storied fashion house and imposed a set of urban and hip hop references to subvert the brand’s refined, Eurocentric connotations. This article describes the t-shirts’ function as parodies using media studies accounts of culture jamming as political practice; Linda Hutcheon’s formulation of parody as literary method; and Henry Louis Gates’s outline of Signifyin(g) in the black oral vernacular tradition. It further contextualizes the t-shirts within historical tensions between dominant fashion institutions and hip hop culture at the semiotic level of the brand logo. It then reads the t-shirt containing the name BALLINCIAGA (manipulating the Paris fashion house Balenciaga) for its intertextual and historical relations to the expressive forms and urban locations of hip hop culture. Finally, the article examines a photograph of a fashion editor wearing the BALLINCIAGA t-shirt to London Fashion Week, in October 2012, as a moment of resistance but also of fashion re-appropriating the t-shirts’ political content. Still, the t-shirts’ circulation as commodities permits for reflection on the politics of fashion and subcultures within the dominant logic of capitalism
Transatlantic Translations of the Button-down Shirt
No full textThis article looks at how the button-down shirt has been translated in the American and British contexts. Employing Barthes’ notion of ‘fashion narrative,’ I describe how in the United States, the button-down shirt is closely associated with the Ivy Look, a style that had emerged from the elite Ivy League universities but became mass fashion by the mid-1960s. While the garment remained youthful, continuing to draw on the collegiate fashion narrative, it also spoke to an American national imaginary of affluence, abundance and class mobility. Both the garment and its paratextual meanings circulated through the global fashion system, emerging in a very different context in 1960s Britain. Speaking to British imaginings of America, it remained youthful but was transformed by the particularities of the British class system, becoming closely associated with two of Britain’s working-class youth subcultures: the mods and the skinheads. Emblematic of the subterranean passion for clothing that characterised the culture of young working-class men in Britain during the latter half of the twentieth century, the button-down shirt became a subcultural icon. In turn, the historicisation and commodification of these subcultures has ensured the button-down shirt’s place in the British national imaginary. Comparing publicity materials produced by American and British clothiers, I examine how the garment’s fashion narratives, both British and American, continue to circulate
The Tango in Translation: Intertextuality, Filmic Representation, and Performing Argentine Tango in the United States
No full textThis article analyzes representations of the Argentine tango by the U.S. media utilizing Farzaneh Farahzad’s theory of “translation as intertextual practice” and Lawrence Venuti’s theory of translated “adaptations.” I argue that the juxtaposition of Latin American and European cultural stereotypes within filmic representations of the tango has created and reinforced a highly racialized master discourse (Said Faiq) that continues to influence how the Argentine tango is perceived in the United States today. Because cultural translation occurs between a hegemonic culture and a marginalized culture, representations of the tango in the United States both create and reinforce a master discourse that inextricably ties the tango to an exoticized and eroticized Latin “Other.”
I conclude by discuss how the racialized and sexualized narratives discussed throughout this paper are integrated into contemporary performance of the tango. I draw on ethnographic research with tango communities throughout the United States to illustrate how 20th century filmic representations of the tango continue to motivate, influence, and inform how, when, and why the Argentine tango is performed by U.S. dancers and musicians. Films analyzed include Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Some Like it Hot, Last Tango in Paris, and The Scent of a Woman, as well as a variety of lesser-known films and television advertisements. Although a large variety of 20th century films feature the tango, the films discussed in this paper were selected for analysis due to the frequency with which they are referenced by tango aficionados and contemporary tango dancers, musicians, and deejays performing throughout the United States today
Schäffner, Christina and Bassnett, Susan (eds). 2010. Political Discourse, Media and Translation. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. (Book Review)
No full textBook Revie
Carrière, Marie. Médée protéiforme. Ottawa : Les Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 2012.
No full textMédée, figure féminine incontournable de la mythologie grecque, mère coupable de fratricide et d’infanticide, a longtemps fasciné lecteurs, écrivains et chercheurs. Si le personnage de Médée constitue par son acte un être unique dans la mythologie, force est de constater que l’infanticide est un sujet prisé de la littérature féminine actuelle.
Comparatiste de formation, Marie Carrière, professeure de littérature à l’Université de l’Alberta où elle dirige également le Centre de littérature canadienne (CLC), propose à ce titre de se pencher sur huit œuvres : La Médée d’Euripide (1986) de Marie Cardinal, Flowers & No More Medea (1994) de Deborah Porter, Médée, Récits de femmes et autres histoires (1986) de Franca Ramee et Dario Fo, The Hungry Woman : A Mexican Medea (2001) de Cherrie Moraga, New Medea (1974) de Monique Bosco, Médée : voix (2004) de Christa Wolf, Petroleum (2004) de Bessora et Le livre d’Emma (2002) de Marie-Célie Agnant). Ces œuvres, aussi différentes soient-elles par leur contexte, revisitent, à travers des procédés d’écriture et de réécriture variés, le mythe de Médée (l’infanticide apparaissant comme source de différend) et façonnent de manière ou d’autre, le discours féministe actuel
Lorsque la traduction sert de frontière entre deux cultures : une analyse traductologique de la voix-over dans la version anglaise de Léolo
No full textLa traduction de films peut en dire long sur les relations entre deux cultures, ce qui en fait un sujet d\u27étude des plus fascinants. En tant qu\u27espace de pratique discursive, les films et autres produits audiovisuels et leur traduction jouent effectivement un rôle important dans l\u27articulation de concepts culturels, comme, par exemple, la féminité, la masculinité et l\u27altérité (Díaz Cintas 281). Un cas de figure intéressant en traduction audiovisuelle est le film québécois Léolo, qui constitue l\u27un des rares exemples où un produit cinématographique est adapté vers l\u27anglais - donc, d\u27une communauté périphérique vers une culture dominante. Cet article analyse le rôle de la voix-over dans Léolo et son doublage en version anglaise et propose une interprétation idéologique de l\u27adaptation en tenant compte de son contexte sociopolitique.
La notion de voix-over telle que conceptualisée en études cinématographiques ainsi que quelques précisions terminologiques sur cette même notion en traductologie mènent ainsi à une analyse idéologique et culturelle de l\u27accent en traduction audiovisuelle. Cet article suggère que la traduction, au lieu de construire des ponts entre les cultures, sert parfois de frontière entre celles-ci. En effet, un contexte sociopolitique donné a d\u27importants impacts, directs ou indirects, sur les choix et stratégies de traduction de produits culturels. Dans le cas précis de Léolo, cet article conclue que la traduction joue un rôle dans la construction d\u27identités distinctes et dans la formation d\u27une frontière entre ces dernières.
Translated movies can say a lot about the relationships between two cultures, which makes audiovisual translation a fascinating area of research in Translation Studies. As Jorge Díaz Cintas puts it, «[a]s a site of discursive practice, audiovisual media and its translation play a special role in the articulation of cultural concepts such as femeninity, masculinity and Otherness, among others.» (Díaz Cintas 281) One interesting case study is the movie Léolo, from Québec, which is one of the few movies that was translated into English - that is, from a peripheral community to a dominant culture. This paper analyses the role of voice-over in Léolo as well as its dubbing in English, and suggests an ideological interpretation of its adaptation, considering its sociopolitical context.
The notion of voice-over, as studied in Film Studies, as well as some clarification about the terminological vagueness surrounding that same notion in Translation Studies bring us to a cultural and ideological analysis of the accent in audiovisual translation. This article argues that instead of building bridges between cultures, translation can sometimes serve as a boundary between them. A given sociopolitical context certainly has important repercussions, direct or indirect, on the choices and decisions made in the process of translating cultural products such as movies. In the case of Léolo, this paper highlights the role of translation in the articulation of separate identities and in the construction of a boundary between them
Translation as Craft, as Recovery, as the Life and Afterlife of a Text: Sujit Mukherjee on Translation in India
No full textSujit Mukherjee passed away in 2003, having been an outstanding intellectual figure in India and beyond. A writer himself, but most of all a translator, Mukherjee contributed greatly to stirring the debate and reflection on translation in India. Although he quite humbly declared, on several occasions, that India never had such a thing as a theory of translation, his books and articles have traced the history of this activity and given shape to a metadiscourse on translation which is far from the abstractions of theories and full of the strength of the enlightened practitioner’s point of view.
Mukherjee’s approach to the observation of translation practices is permeated by his modesty, his brisk simplicity and, above all, his relentless positivity. In his words, translation becomes a dynamic, pervasive and constructive practice, far from the subordinate and derivative essence so often ascribed to it by Western scholars.
This paper brings to the fore the non-theories of Sujit Mukerjee and proceeds by discussing them along a chronological axis. Organized in three sections, the paper first analyses Mukherjee’s viewpoint on translation in India before the British, to then move onto translation and the role of English during and after colonization. The third and final section offers a comparison between Mukherjee’s ideas and reflections and those by three outstanding Western translation scholars
Minor Marks and Modifications: Foot Traffic
No full textThis contribution is part of a larger project that explores graffiti and other non-official and often illicit acts of public marking outside of the usual juridicial frameworks. The project focuses on the phenomenology of looking, on the emplaced and embodied act of seeing in the world. This specific bit of writing is a companion piece to a long-term photo project on street art that occurs on the street itself (rather than walls). This project, called "Foot Traffic," is distinguished by a square format and the prominent inclusion of the photographer\u27s feet. This playful use of what is typically read as an unintentional inclusion functions to draw attention to positionally and spectatorship. The feet tie the image of the subject (the graffiti) to the location of the pedestrian spectator
Lumumba’s Bike
No full textSven Augustijnen is a Belgian film maker and visual artist. In 2012 he contributed a piece called AWB 082-3317 7922 to the Track exhibition in the city of Gent (Belgium). Track invited artists to provide art installations that were site-specific, and engaged with local narratives, history, and situations. Augustijnen had an old bike chain-locked against a park tree, with a bunch of charcoal on its baggage rack; it stood in the vicinity of the so-called “Moorken” monument, a memorial for the heroic adventures of the brothers Van de Velde in Congo Free State, erected in Gent’s prominent Citadelpark at the end of the 19th century. The idea of AWB 082-3317 7922 came about during the shooting of his film Spectres (2011), in which Augustijnen goes in search for the location of Patrice Lumumba’s assassination in Katanga, Congo, in January 1961. While the theme of the bike installation is the (only partially resolved) murder of Patrice Lumumba, first Prime Minister of the newly independent Congo, the piece spawns a spatial and historical cartography of events and developments within the park landscape as well as the greater urban, and global scope. It is the kind of street art that needs its environment for any chance of meaning, which derive from the contiguities it allows and creates