FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts
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Appropriating Identity: William Hogarth, Thomas Gainsborough, and Britain’s Myth of the Self-Made Man
Get PDFBritain’s self-made man was defined by taste, money, influence, and most importantly, middle-class rank in the early decades of the Industrial Revolution. During the mid-1700s, a change began to take place between the social classes, stripping the aristocracy of their role as Britain’s foremost connoisseurs and trendsetters. The shift from aristocratic indulgences to those of the newly wealthy middle class stemmed from a number of factors. For one, the economy was changing during the 18th-century. An industrial environment, which often included factories and workers, was the new-found key to the financial success of self-made men. As David Kutcha explains, “late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century English aristocrats lost control of the meanings of consumption, as political, economic, and clothing reformers succeeded in portraying aristocratic men as prodigal parasites living off of a virtuous and industrious nation” (135). To prove that the individuals in England’s highest social class were unworthy of their role as connoisseurs of taste, middle-class reformers attacked the aristocracy, declaring that the upper classes were unworthy of their status and were living off the successes provided by industry and self-made men.Portraiture created in Britain during the 18th- and 19th-centuries, particularly paintings by William Hogarth (1697-1764) and Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), exemplifies the myth of the self-made man, as well as the shift in social class dominance. Moreover, portraiture emphasizes the middle-class’s adoption of aristocratic visual language, while in turn depicting men as wealthy industrials who benefit the national economy and define the manly character of England. Although middle-class reformers were determined to prove that the titled class was effeminate and parasitic, it was the aristocratic ideal of masculinity that the middling ranks adopted as their own. English artists Hogarth and Gainsborough were influential in addressing the tension produced by the shifting social lines of the Industrial Revolution. Bound to Britain’s wealth for their own survival, both Hogarth and Gainsborough sought the patronage of the rising middle-class while sustaining their own notions of the self-made myth
Marcuse on Art and Technology
Get PDFIn this paper I will argue that Marcuse\u27s aesthetics are deeply implicated in his concept of technology, and that technological change is in fact a fundamental "praxis" corresponding to his aesthetic theory. I will also argue that Marcuse\u27s "aesthetics of technology" is based on his theory of sensation which he developed in a peculiar synthesis of the early Marx and Freud
“Child’s Own Voice”: Representing the Child Audience
Get PDFThis article, drawn from my doctoral research into children’s public service broadcasting (PSB) in the UK in the 21st century, examines the role that the child’s voice plays in the construction of the child audience made by producers of children’s television in their texts, production practices and discourse. It is argued that both the literal and figurative concept of the “child’s own voice” is a doctrine frequently deployed by producers to claim an authenticity or transparency to their representations. Through this doctrine, producers stress the relevance and appeal of representations of the child audience and thus foreground television’s probity as a beneficial cultural artefact under the aegis of public service broadcasting. By analysis of a specific case study, drawn from my role as participant-observer in the BBC Scotland Children’s department under the AHRC’s collaborative doctoral award scheme, I illustrate and discuss the key elements of the doctrine of child’s own voice that producers of public service children’s media frequently invoke
Fractured Bodies and Social Wounds: The Simulation of Trauma in J.G. Ballard’s Crash
Get PDFJ.G. Ballard’s sci-fi novel Crash is a powerful – albeit highly controversial – depiction of man’s destiny in late industrial culture, “the destiny of [his] human body in a world of automotive disaster” and proliferating technology (Youngquist). It traumatically “crashes” the boundaries between bodies and machines, interior states of subjectivity and the external world, even the boundaries between fiction and reality, and depicts a ghastly marriage between sex and technology through the mediation of the metallic car-body – which, as Ballard points out in his “Introduction” to the French edition of the text, is portrayed in Crash “not only as a sexual image, but as a total metaphor for man’s life in today’s society” (Ballard 6)
The World of African Storytelling
Get PDFMy favorite introduction to a discussion of African storytelling is to recall a setting that Oyekan Owomoyela sketched out many years ago from his experience in the Yoruba city of Ibadan in western Nigeria. It is of a traditional family relaxing in their premises at the end of a hardworking day.After the evening meal, the members of the family gather on a porch and if there is moonlight, the younger members gather in the courtyard to play games like hide and seek.On the porch, the entertainment begins with riddles. What dines with an oba (paramount chief of a community) and leaves him to clear the dishes? A fly. What passes befor the oba’s palace without making obeisance? Rain flood. On its way to Oyo its face is towards Oyo, on its way from Oyo its face is still towards Oyo. What is it? A double-faced drum. After a few riddles, the tales begin (Owomoyela 264-265)
ORAL HISTORY AS POLITICAL RESISTANCE: Posse and Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Get PDFIn the introduction to his The Western Reader Jim Kitses observes that the Western film, a genre long-heralded as the “cornerstone of American identity,” (16) is itself not exempt from an undertaking of racial and cultural revisionism. He points to a resurgence of films from the 1990’s that, in an era of multi-culturalism, hybridity, and counter-strategies, have functioned to redefine the codes of the traditional Western, bringing to life the postmodern Western. The subversive politics of Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), and Maggie Greenwald’s The Ballad of Little Jo (1993), are two such examples.
Mediating Human-Technology Relationships: Explorations of Hybridity, Humanity and Embodiment in Doctor Who
Get PDFThe relationship between human beings and technology has been a regular concern of the television series, Doctor Who. Though its titular hero moves through space-time by means of advanced technology and he is by his own admission a technological genius and Doctor \u27of everything really\u27, the program nevertheless consistently maps the unease that attends the interaction of humans and the technology - whether through the human characters\u27 horror at the abuse of technology and its power or through characters who incorporate this interaction.The trope of the cyborg, the human-machine hybrid that articulates many contemporary fears (and desires) about the intrusion of technology on the \u27human\u27 is enacted and embodied in Doctor Who by the Daleks and the Cybermen - long-term enemies of the Doctor. In the recent new series (2005-2009) featuring Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant both Daleks and Cybermen have returned, to enact contemporary concerns about new technologies. This paper explores the recent Dalek double-episode, "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks" (2007) for its representation of current human-technology relationships
On Dwarves and Scientists: Probing for Technological Ethics in the Creative Imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien
Get PDFThe presence of technology in contemporary life has become so pervasive that sociologist, Jacques Ellul has described this age as a "technological society". J.R.R. Tolkien lived in the midst of the ascension of this technological society at the turn of the twentieth-century, and though he is well recognized for the quality of his fiction, the specific treatment of technology in his works has not been fully appreciated. In Tolkien\u27s work this topic may not be immediately obvious, especially given that technology is typically conceived in a narrow economy: freestanding and utterly contemporary. An example of this attitude might be the affirmation of a computer as "technology", but not the edge of a chef\u27s knife. Tolkien casts his vision of technology with a more encompassing definition, treating it as the making of things by creatures. This paper seeks primarily to substantiate the presence of this technological theme, so defined, in Tolkien\u27s work. Accomplishing this will require attention to two fronts: to Tolkien\u27s theory and practice. In unpacking the theoretical basis for his technological commentary, I will first justify the use of "fairy stories" for broader ethical reflection and will draw attention to Tolkien\u27s specific commentary regarding the use of this genre. I will further examine Tolkien\u27s specific attention to the topic of technology, and will clear him of charges that he is anti-technological. I will spend the latter half of the paper explicating specific ways, in practice, that Tolkien deploys the concept of sub-creation in his mythical stories. My analysis in this paper will be limited to ways in which the narrative of the Dwarves in his fiction serves as an analogy for the scientific enterprise. Ultimately, I will suggest that in Tolkien\u27s account the products of technological synthesis (making), are in themselves morally ambivalent. I choose "ambivalent", rather than "neutral", because, as will be developed more fully below, there is always a moral context for technology, either good or bad - but never neither
Irish voices for Irish visions: Gael Linn’s documentary film projects
Get PDFThis paper seeks to analyse three important documentary film projects of Gael Linn – the Amharc Éireann newsreel series, Mise Eire and Saoirse? – in terms of the connection that they create between Irish-language cinema and the ideologies of Irish nationalism. Since Gael Linn was founded in 1953 in direct response to a perceived failure on the part of the newly independent Irish state to revive the Irish language, I will begin with a very short overview of the Irish government’s efforts in this direction, followed by an examination of the goals and objectives of Gael Linn when it was founded, before moving on to an analysis of the film projects
The Independent Inventor: Hero or Fool?
Get PDFIn this paper I will tackle a subject often neglected when grand treatises on innovation are written: the independent inventor. Although independent inventors are not as significant as they once were, their death is, as Mark Twain said, responding to reports of his own demise, "very much exaggerated." Not only do independent inventors still invent, they are more successful than is generally thought. Here I would like to take the time to give an in-depth examination of this interesting species