Category Archives: English

Writing Questionnaire 2024

By Julia Neugarten

Writing is the bread and butter of the humanities scholar. It is our chisel and our marble, our raison d’être, and yet the bane of our existence. With the daunting task of writing a dissertation in the forefront of my mind, I was curious about my colleagues’ writing habits, and so I circulated a questionnaire among the employees of the department of Arts and Culture Studies at Radboud University. The response I got was inspiring and insightful, and whether you’re a student or a scholar, a poet or a playwright, some of it may be helpful to you as well.

How much do we write?

Twelve people responded to the survey. On average, they spend 226 minutes per week writing, or a little under four hours.1 The amount of weekly writing time per person varies by a lot, ranging from 60 to 750 minutes. Together, these 12 people spend 45 hours per week writing.

Some people measure writing in time and others measure it in output, so the questionnaire asked about both. Conventional wisdom holds that it is best to write every day,2 and about one-third of respondents do. Shout-out to the person who manages multiple writing sessions per day.

When comparing writing time to word production, interesting differences emerge. One respondent estimates that their writing sessions take longer than 2 hours and results in less than one paragraph of writing. Another estimates that they produce more than two pages in a session of under 30 minutes. Of course these questions do not account for the quality of the writing, or how much actually ends up getting published. This is purely about production.

I also asked: How many pages of academic text do you estimate you have written in the past year, assuming a page is around 250 words?3 Here’s the reported response in pages, with each bar representing one respondent.

Notably, the person who estimated their output at 1000 pages a year (actually, their response was ‘more than 1000 pages’) also reported that they were not happy (2 out of 5) with how much they wrote.

How do we feel about writing?

Fortunately, most respondents report that they enjoy writing.

Meanwhile, more than half also report that they dread writing. For example, the person who said they enjoy writing not at all identifies the following phases in their writing process:

pain. agony. suffering. killing. relief.

Interestingly, 4 respondents (1/3) dread and enjoy writing approximately in equal measure, reporting a score of 4 or 5 in response to both questions.

Around 3/4 of respondents are not very happy about how much they write, although most are at least moderately satisfied with how they write. The numbers on writer’s block are pretty spread out, although those who experience a lot of writer’s block also, unsurprisingly, report lots of dread around writing.

What are our writing techniques and processes?

I was curious about the strategies my colleagues used to get their writing done, and the steps they followed to structure the writing process. Many people mentioned that hot beverages, isolation and frequent exercise were key to getting them writing. The Pomodoro Method, where you alternate between 25-minute writing sprints and short breaks, was praised twice for boosting productivity.4

I was happy to see that I’m not the only one who feels like successful writing requires some kind of ritual to get you into the appropriate mindset. Someone reports that they need to:

block a whole day at a time (otherwise no way of getting into the ‘mood’)

Another respondent uses music to set the right atmosphere:

I have a playlist that is always the same so that I don’t REALLY hear it. I sometimes alternate music styles because the rhythm of the beat impacts the way that I think and write.

Many respondents say it can feel intimidating to start writing. For one writer, Word feels too ‘official’ and so writing on paper in the initial stages is a good way to lower the threshold. Interestingly, they also describe a Google Doc as less intimidating than a Word document.

Outlining is also mentioned as a good way to get rid of the empty page, and someone reports:

I tend to “trick” myself and write pieces in bits and bobs.

When it comes to the best order for writing and revising, responses are mixed. Some people write their texts from beginning to end, saying:

[I] can only move on to the next section of text if all earlier paragraphs are as complete and finished as I can make them.

Other people write the conclusion first, or write from beginning to end except for the introduction, which they save for last. Some people do not adhere to a linear order at all during writing. One piece of advice I particularly like is the idea to see the structuring of a text and its writing as carried out by two separate entities:

With pieces that I find really difficult to write I will write an outline where I briefly state which point I want to make in each paragraph so that I separate the role of opdrachtgever and uitvoerder of my own writing: I first write myself an outline, and then I pretend that I’m just the writer who was hired to execute it wether they agree or not.

This quote also touches on the next question I asked: Do you view writing and research as separate tasks? Most people answered yes to this question, although there were a couple of firm ‘no’s’ – like the person who says: “Writing is thinking. Writing is research” – and some people were unsure. Personally, I like this view:

Writing is about communicating results, not about creating results.

This separation lets us see the craft of writing as a separate academic skill, which I find valuable. Another respondent explains:

[Research and writing are] not neatly separated in time: once I start trying to write a final text I’ll discover along the way that I need research for specific steps in my thought process. So in practice they may seem to blend, but I regard them as separate sometimes very quickly alternating activities. Also: my experience is that writer block is what happens when you lose control over the difference between research, thinking and writing, and between writing and editing. It is, in my personal practice, important to be able to write horrible first drafts.

So the separation of writing and research seems productive to many. Nonetheless, I find it useful to think of writing as the material process through which scholarly research comes into being, especially in the humanities. That idea is described elegantly by one of the respondents who says no, writing and research are not separate:

my keyboard is my laboratory, this is where I atomise my data and pour them in textual flasks to see which ingredients react under which conditions.

Writing Advice: the Best and the Worst

Finally, I asked respondents about the best and worst writing advice they ever received. Most good advice mentioned the discipline to write every day, and a variety of methods for lowering the threshold on writing, so that writing every day became easier. Those tips included, for example: outlining first, lowering one’s own expectations about the quality and elegance of the first draft, starting to write at whatever point in the text is already clear to you. Similar advice is communicated in motto’s like “Done is better than perfect.” and “The best PhD is the Submitted PhD.” In other words: the perfect is the enemy of the good.

There’s one more piece of advice that I really like, and might write on a sticky note to keep by my desk:

Some of my most productive writing has been when I felt the joy of making discoveries and communicating my findings. Keep the joy!

Overall, what people mentioned as bad advice was often the inverse of what they considered good advice: perfectionism, especially. But some core values about the societal role of academic writing also came out in response to this question:

Writing styles are not neutral choices – they also communicate an intent and what I dare call a “vibe”. We are trying to communicate and collaborate – I’m not a fan of taking writers who’s style is hermetic or hostile towards more naïve readers as role models. Also, writing may seem like a solo activity, but I believe that at it’s core academic writing is a deeply social and collective activity: we write it down for others to take apart and re-use. (…) as academic writers we are pretty much valuable precisely to the extent that we make ourselves available to being cited and re-purposed for someone else’s research. So any advice that places to much emphasis on writing as the work of a Lone Genius Having Ideas does not make sense to me.

In a similar vein, someone observes:

Worst advice: writing is is method to order your own thoughts. It isn’t. It is a method to order the readers’ thoughts.

To conclude: in this piece, I’ve tried to order my own thoughts about the writing processes of my colleagues, and in the process I hope I have also helped you order yours. I’m going to experiment with writing academic texts in a different order, and I wish you all happy writing!

If you want to examine every response in detail, you can consult the full results of this year’s Arts and Culture Studies Writing Questionnaire here, with my added calculations in bold.

Footnotes

  1. Full disclosure: I myself am one of the 12 respondents. ↩︎
  2. Authors credited with this advice include Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Graham Greene and Eric Hayot, the author of The Elements of Academic Style whose insights on academic writing inspired me to
    create this survey. ↩︎
  3. I removed one respondent from the dataset here, who reported 12.500 pages. That must have been a typo, or maybe they meant words instead of pages. Otherwise it would be 3.125.000 words. For comparison, depending on the translation, War & Peace is between 560.000 and 587.000 words. I don’t think anyone is writing 5.5 copies of War and Peace per year, but if you’re the respondent and this is actually accurate, let me know. I’d love to interview you. ↩︎
  4. The Pomodoro Method was invented by Francesco Cirillo. ↩︎

Algorithmic Ecologies: Refik Anadol’s Living Paintings

By Adil Boughlala and Anouk Stevens

Wavelike patterns move gracefully across the screen as natural colours seamlessly ebb and flow, occasionally revealing snippets of images that resemble familiar landscapes of nature. Living Paintings: Nature at Kunsthal Rotterdam features Refik Anadol’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. The abstract artworks by Anadol provide visitors with a visual spectacle that explores the meaning of being human in an increasingly digitised society.1 Through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Anadol creates AI Data paintings, or ‘living paintings’, that immerse the visitor in unthinkable yet recognisable landscapes. Whereas the introduction of new technologies seems to repeatedly highlight the divide between nature and culture – two strands that usually do not meet – the exhibition presents a symbiotic relationship between nature and technology. It blurs the boundaries between the ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’, and thus challenges traditional notions of what is ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’.

The ‘living paintings’ we saw reminded us of ecologies: they pose an immersive and interconnected environment of complex actors that seem to be always moving, always evolving, always ‘becoming.’2 Understanding Anadol’s works as algorithmic ecologies implies that algorithms are not isolated entities but exist within a system where they interact with each other, with data inputs, and with the environment in which they operate. Algorithms are not static, they evolve and adapt based on various factors, creating a dynamic and interconnected system akin to the interactions within an ecological environment. This ecological thinking allows for reflection on environmental conditions, and more broadly the interconnectedness of the planet and its inhabitants. We revisit the Living Paintings: Nature exhibition through this lens of ecologies.

The artist: Refik Anadol

The globally renowned Turkish-American new media artist Refik Anadol is known for his data-driven artworks. He adopts machine learning algorithms to create abstract, constantly changing, dream-like digital realms that usually address humankind’s impact on or position in natural environments. The exhibition displays Anadol’s most significant nature-themed artworks as triptychs, literal windows into a digital realm. Each series is composed of a dataset and features its own unique transformation of data into the artworks presented, from wind prediction data to images of natural parks. According to Anadol, these datasets serve as collective memories, memories that belong to everyone and should not be confined to personal or private memories.3

Contrary to common belief, the process of creating these AI data paintings requires a combination of algorithmic processing and human handpicking. Anadol does this together with a team of data scientists, researchers and designers who, together, form Refik Anadol Studio. By use of algorithms, Anadol ponders the question of whether machines can actually dream, hallucinate, or process individual and collective memories, a recurring element in the entirety of his oeuvre.4 Anadol’s body of work has introduced a new aesthetic to the artworld that intersects art, technology, nature and the human, and is distinctly recognisable as his.

Winds of LA & Artificial Realities: Pacific Ocean

Data allows us to anticipate natural phenomena. Should you wear a raincoat today? Are there potential risks and is it perhaps better to stay inside? The process of datafication allows us to gain knowledge on our natural environment yet it also abstracts our relationship to it by reducing nature into numerical data. The series “Winds of LA” and “Pacific Ocean” reverse this process and visualise data in a manner that becomes readable for non-experts. Both series integrate data collected from weather service companies: “Winds of LA” uses data collected from real-time API weather sensors placed around LA 5 and “Pacific Ocean” integrates publicly available datasets that are shared daily.6 Rather than rejecting the integration of data into our everyday lives, Anadol shows how, with the use of new technologies, artistic translations of data strengthen our understanding of and relationship to our environment. Although the datasets of these two works differ, both take as a point of departure the translation of data into poetic and fluid patterns. Whereas “Winds of LA” transforms data into blue and white squares that mimic the abrupt movements of the winds of LA, “Pacific Ocean” visualises data more smoothly, resulting in a fluid surface similar to the ocean. Instead of presenting data as tabular information, it is transformed into an affective and dynamic image. The natural flow of coloured data on-screen allows visitors to submerge themselves in the artworks and connect with the portrayed natural phenomena.

Winds of LA
Artificial Realities: Pacific Ocean

California Landscapes: Generative Study & Artificial Realities

“California Landscapes: Generative Study” and “Artificial Realities: California Landscapes” are two series based on the same dataset of over 153 million images of California’s National Parks. Despite sharing the same dataset, the two series feature two different visual representations: “Generative Study” creates images that are recognisable and similar to the national parks. Yet, the images continuously shift into new forms, visualising natural elements including skies, mountains, trees, waterfalls and much more in fluid ways. While doing so, it projects interconnected lines on top of the images, underlining the algorithmic work at play beneath the screens’ interface. You can see the machine working. Contrarily, “Artificial Realities” proposes a more abstract view of California’s National Parks, similar to “Winds of LA” and “Artificial Realities: Pacific Ocean”. The series draws on the natural pigments of nature, bringing together technology and nature visually, triggering a sense of belonging to the Earth.7 While ”Generative Study” presents more static and photorealistic images in which natural landscapes can be more easily recognised, ”Artificial Realities” offers a more fluid and immersive experience that explores the dynamic and ever-changing essence of nature. In other words, what distinguishes both series is the degree of abstraction utilised in their presentation. The juxtaposition of these approaches prompts reflection on the relationship between technology and nature; as nature is mediated through a flurry of computations, technology can provide us with different versions of how we can perceive nature.

California Landscapes: Generative Study

The contrast between both series is also a testament to the nature of human-machine collaboration: “With the same data, we [Refik Anadol Studio] can generate infinite versions of the same sculpture, but choosing this moment, and creating this moment in time and space, is the moment of creation”.8 This approach not only attests to the need of human intervention, but it also acknowledges the reciprocal agency of algorithms in the creative act. The human is decentred as the algorithm assumes a prominent position. While Anadol decides the perimeters, it is the algorithm that decides the final result. The audience is then invited to reflect on the potential role of machine learning within art, but also to what extent the machine is part of the creative process.9

Artificial Realities: California Landscapes

Living Painting: Immersive Room

Completely unique to this exhibition is Living Painting: Immersive Room. As you step inside this square-shaped box you are embraced by a three-dimensional, kinetic, multisensory space of spectacle that no image or video can do justice. The screens display the same patterns from Anadol’s AI data paintings while the mirrors, strategically placed on the floor and ceiling, create an infinite space in which your body becomes your only reference point. Within this space, you cease to be a mere observer; instead, you seamlessly integrate into the very fabric of Anadol’s artwork. You become an active participant in the algorithmic ecology, a living element within the computational tapestry. The boundaries between the observer and the observed dissolve, offering a rare opportunity to not just witness but also to embody the artist’s vision.

Being included in the algorithmic ecology extends beyond the conventional engagement of art. It also prompts reflection on environmental issues and an affective re-evaluation of our relationship with art, technology, nature, and the interconnectedness between them. Digital technologies are capable of evoking emotional resonance through storytelling; stories have the power to evoke empathy and affective connections with the natural world, which in turn can influence our attitudes and behaviours towards environmental conservation.10 Anadol’s works provide abstract narratives that resonate with us on an emotional and subconscious level, stirring deep-seated feelings of connection to the natural within.

Living Painting: Immersive Room

Concluding remarks

Anadol’s works not only showcase algorithmic ecologies that intersect the realms of art, technology, nature and the human, but they also lend themselves exceptionally well to a relaxed and enchanting experience at the museum. Each video, well over 16 minutes long and presented in a dimly lit room, invites visitors to linger and lose themselves in a mesmerising, digital world of tranquillity. As you ponder your own thoughts, you might occasionally recognise a mountain or a sunset, which brings you back to the world around you.

Living Paintings: Nature is on show at Kunsthal Rotterdam until 1 April. Still not convinced? The exhibition is enjoyable for all ages:

A group of elderly people enjoying “Winds of LA” during a guided tour

Footnotes

  1. https://www.kunsthal.nl/en/plan-your-visit/exhibitions/refik-anadol/ ↩︎
  2. Iris van der Tuin and Nanna Verhoeff, Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). ↩︎
  3. Alina Cohen, ‘Refik Anadol’s Mesmerizing Data Paintings Are Captivating Audiences Worldwide’, Artsy, 15 February 2023, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-refik-anadols-mesmerizing-data-paintings-captivating-audiences-worldwide. ↩︎
  4. Refik Anadol and Pelin Kivrak, ‘Machines That Dream: How AI-Human Collaborations in Art Deepen Audience Engagement’, Management and Business Review 3, no. 1 & 2 (2023): 101–7. ↩︎
  5. https://refikanadol.com/works/winds-of-la/ ↩︎
  6. https://refikanadol.com/works/artificial-realities-pacific-ocean/ ↩︎
  7. https://refikanadol.com/works/artificial-realities-california-landscapes/ ↩︎
  8. Refik Anadol et al., ‘Modern Dream: How Refik Anadol Is Using Machine Learning and NFTs to Interpret MoMA’s Collection’, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), 15 November 2021, https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/658. ↩︎
  9. Joanna Zylinska, ‘Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence’, Science 381, no. 6654 (13 July 2023): 139–40, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adh0575. ↩︎
  10. Alexa Weik von Mossner, Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative, Cognitive Approaches to Culture (Columbus: The Ohio State UP, 2017). ↩︎

Between Stereotypes and Stories

written by Anna P.H. Geurts

Historians such as myself love a good story. And while they usually look for these stories in old manuscripts or eyewitness accounts, they won’t say no to the odd amusement park every now and then.

One of the older themed amusement parks of Europe is the Efteling in the Netherlands. Some of the attractions at the Efteling are based on specific stories, such as Rapunzel or Pinocchio. Others are based simply on ideas, images or types that circulate in the European cultural imagination. The idea that trees might come alive, for instance, or that dragons guard treasures. But also ideas about a mysterious orient, or an inhospitable Africa.

The problem with these latter images is that they were created to justify the conquest of these regions and the use of violence against them. And in the present day, they still support power differences between different areas in the world.

What’s more: I would argue that for a visitor to an amusement park, there is nothing much amusing about simply seeing stereotypes repeated. Surely, we want to be surprised at least a little, in order to really feel entertained?

However much I admire the Efteling, it certainly has its store of such stereotypical imagery. The dark ride Carnaval Festival may be the most well-known container of these images. Like Disney’s It’s a Small World, it features national buildings and national ‘types’ of people from around the world. That means that the very essence of the ride is a celebration of cliches. Some of these cliches are, however, fairly harmless: a choir of Dutch frogs, for instance. In other scenes, the designers have responded creatively to these cliches, like they responded creatively to the talking-tree idea mentioned earlier. This is where Carnaval Festival is at its best. The cliches are used for a visual joke, or they are turned into something beautiful. I remember being in awe as a child of the Japanese masks that were on display, the Scottish bagpiper, the shadow play with kites, or the arctic ceiling.

A third type of scene on this ride, however, has been using cliches in a much more problematic manner. The room representing the makers’ idea of ‘dark Africa’, for instance. The human figures which elsewhere on the ride are mostly just friendly (and blue-eyed, even in Mexico or Hawaii!), here had a stupid look on their faces (and no irises at all). They sported exaggerated lips as found in the ‘Sambo’ or ‘coon’ characters, and facial piercings that, although in vogue in Europe now, were probably meant to stand for anything but civilisation by the makers of the ride in the 1980s. They lived in a forest, were perpetually engaged in warfare (or else perhaps a symbolic demonstration of masculine prowess), brandishing spears and shields, and were observed by several colonial figures in khaki (or were the Africans threatening some of them? This always remained a little ambiguous).

Although the scene also included several humorous components, it may be clear why it has attracted criticism ever since opening to the public. It propagated a historical colonial image of Africa and was as such also very much out of tune with the rest of the ride, that instead focused on contemporary touristic imagery. It therefore suggested to the average European visitor that all of Africa is a forest, and that when travelling there they would be met by a troupe of silly bush warriors and – still – a colonial regime.

When the ride closed for a major technical overhaul, therefore, the Efteling also adjusted this scene, as well as several Asian ones.

The scene now looks like this:

Much has been done to meet the critics. Still, this visitor wonders whether the designers of the overhaul have really understood their critique.

Not only have some harmful stereotypes remained unchallenged and some new ones added. Why, for instance, are these African characters the only ones who are situated in uncultivated ‘nature’? Why, also, is an entire continent conflated into one scene, as if cultural distinctions do not matter when it comes to Africa, while the entire ride is premised on such cultural distinctions? For instance, we find a central-African rainforest and a tropical ape (an Indonesian Orangutan?) together with a South-African flag. The new music composed for this scene even seems to be Caribbean – ‘Black’, too, after all?

But equally, the spokespersons for the Efteling do not show much awareness of what this is all about. In interviews, they speak of an anti-colonial criticism coming from people who did not grow up with the Efteling: as if those hurt by the depictions cannot be Dutch or Flemish nationals; as if appreciation and critique cannot go together; and as if, most surprising of all from a commercial viewpoint, one first needs to ‘learn’ about the Efteling in order to join in the fun.

Equally, they suggest that colonial imagery has only become harmful in recent history. The ride had to change, they say, because it no longer fitted the present ‘diverse’ day and age. But surely, the entire point of colonial imagery, from the very start of colonisation onwards, is that it would harm the colonised? The world has always been a diverse place, and the ride has always attracted criticism. Only perhaps the Efteling is now finally seeing the commercial potential of attracting a more diverse group of visitors?

Finally, the new figures are presented as a great improvement because instead of nose-rings, they now wear ‘traditional African costume’. However, it is precisely the idea of Africa as a ‘traditional’ place – stuck in time – that has justified and still justifies colonial exploitation. (I am not entirely clear what is wrong with the piercings, by the way. Only that some view them as backwards, which may again invite a view of Africa as primitive. But should we go along in seeing piercings this way?)

As said, some harmful stereotypes remain, in the Efteling, not just in Carnaval Festival but in other rides, too.

Still, this year has seen a bright light on the horizon. Two more attractions based on colonial ideas have just closed for renovation and it seems that these, in contrast to Carnaval Festival, will not continue the old pattern of presenting stereotypes but introduce two more fundamental changes.

Firstly, the Adventure Maze and Monsieur Cannibale will shift perspective 180 degrees. Rather than continuing to be based on European images of the colonised, they will be based on the cultural heritage itself of a formerly colonised region. They will spotlight two stories from Sinbad the Sailor’s cycle of adventures, written probably in western Asia or Africa in the early modern period.

Even better: they will not just be based on simple types or cliches that float around in the cultural imagination but on actual stories, with plot, characters, and a lot of space for different interpretations and ways of enjoying them: like the tales of Rapunzel or Pinocchio that we see on display elsewhere in the park. I look forward to seeing the Efteling embody these stories to their fullest.

About the photos: Promotional photos by the Efteling, used here for review purposes with reference to the Berne Convention and the doctrine of fair use.

Touching Me Touching You

written by Vincent Meelberg

One thing social distancing has taught us is how important touch is for us human beings. When people do not have the possibility to physically touch other people they can develop a condition called touch starvation or touch deprivation. Touch starvation increases stress, depression, and anxiety, which in turn may result in serious health problems such as headaches, depression, and chronic pain. 

And yet, touch seems to be a rather neglected human sense that, at least until recently, we took for granted. Vision, on the other hand, is usually regarded as the most important means by which human subjects acquire knowledge regarding the world, and ever since the visual turn theory has focused on that sense primarily. Hearing, too, is increasingly regarded as a sense worthy of study as well. Touch, however, remains rather undertheorized, at least in cultural studies.

Nevertheless, on October 4, 2021, the US physiologist David Julius and the Lebanese-American molecular biologist Ardem Patapoutian received the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of the receptors of nerve cells that allow us to feel heat, cold, pain, and touch. Thanks to these receptors the nervous system is able to detect what the positions of our bodies are, where the arms and leg are, to feel the heat of a warm drink, or the sun on our faces. Without these facilities we would not be able to survive, as through touch we are able to establish contact with the outside world. Also, touch enables us to manipulate and interact with our environment. And interpersonal contact, let alone intimate contact, depends on touch as well. Touch thus seems to be rather important after all, and the pandemic has reminded us of its importance.

Touch is crucial for direct interpersonal contact. According to Matthew Fulkerson interpersonal contact can be established through what he calls affiliative touch: affiliative touch involves contact through touch with another person. Direct affiliative, interpersonal touch is quite intimate, sometimes erotic even. Caressing another person’s body, or kissing someone else’s lips, are examples of quite intimate and affective acts of affiliative touch. 

Affiliative touch can also be distal, indirect, or mediated. This may sound paradoxical, but Fulkerson explains that “[…] through touch we are sensitive to pressure waves and vibrations, as well as other similar signals, and these stimuli are capable of travel through media just like light and sound waves. It thus makes sense that our touch receptors could bring us into contact with distal objects or features, especially when there is a strong mutual informational link between the distal object and our bodies supported by our exploratory actions” (Fulkerson, Matthew. 2014. The First Sense: A Philosophical Study of Human Touch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 150). 

And this is how cultural practices such as theatre and musical performances work. These practices establish interpersonal contact through distal affiliative touch. Sounds touch the eardrums, as well as the entire body, of the audience. The actual physical presence of actors on stage can almost literally be felt. We feel the movements of dancers in our own bodies while watching a dance performance. And this is an experience that cannot be had, at least not in the same manner and with the same intensity, by watching or listening to a recording of such performances. These recordings simply do not have the capacity to touch an audience in the way a live performance can. Experiencing performances via recordings only may ultimately even lead to touch starvation as well, albeit of a different kind. 

Despite the somewhat derogatory comment made by the Dutch Secretary of Health, Hugo de Jonge, that one can easily compensate for not being able to visit live performances during the pandemic by watching a DVD, live performances are essential to our mental health. They are not only essential because artistic practices in general may be beneficial to both practitioners and audiences alike, but also because these performances allow for different ways to be touched, to be caressed by the physical presence of performers on stage. Live performances create possibilities for affiliative touch, and as such may help to prevent touch deprivation. In short: in times of social distancing the performing arts are sorely needed.

Coping with trauma: Marvel’s WandaVision (2021)

Written by Jonathan Zackor

Content Warning: mentions traumatic events relating to death.

Trauma often refers to something unspeakable, something that cannot be named. It constitutes an “event outside the range of human experience”, per the definition of the American Psychological Association (1987: 250, through Brown). Trauma disrupts, invades, alienates, haunts. It poses a threat: the fearful anticipation of losing control, for example over personal safety; and has an immense impact on everyday life, relationships, and self-image. Vulnerable or affected people, therefore, might try to hold onto the few fragments that offer to counter this threat, and might even use coping mechanisms that are, upon first look, detrimental to well-being (maladaptive). Furthermore, it is quite common to obsess about means to take back control, for example by utilizing a self-written narrative that re-establishes boundaries (Caruth 1995, King 2000). To help manage overwhelming emotional experiences, people might also regress into ‘safe spaces’ that can take on many different forms: holding on to fictional narratives that allow an escape from the present reality might be one of them. 

This essay explores a text from popular culture that fits into the space of specifically female trauma, pain, and the attempt to rebuild a life’s narrative: Marvel Studios’ WandaVision (2021). Its main protagonist Wanda Maximoff, situated in the American town Westview, is forced to deal with her violence- and grief-related trauma. The narrative of the series plays out in the space of the American suburb and is furthermore anchored onto popular culture sitcom narratives ranging from the 1950s up until 2010. This text investigates the following: With the help of superpowers (telekinesis, energy projection, hypnosis) that Wanda possesses, she equipped her environment with an array of fictional narratives and is,  therefore, the driving force behind it. This enables her to act out a safety fantasy that is assumed to be related to the traumatic events that she endured. Trauma, and especially female trauma, is rarely part of the popular media discourse (Ahmed 2004, Brown 1995). Yet, it is pertinent to WandaVision. This TV series is situated in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (a superhero film franchise that is from here on abbreviated as MCU). MCU films usually follow a strict formula of fast-paced action and are centred around influential male characters. Conflicts that obstruct a character’s happiness and their eventual solution are often paired with at least one epic fight scene. WandaVision, while somewhat relying on previous MCU material, now takes a different route. The focus on a female heroine makes space for the portrayal of a narrative that relies on the female sphere.  

WandaVision takes place in a constructed sphere can be assessed from two perspectives: the inside and the outside. Within the diegesis of the series, a certain sense of reality is established and the outside space only serves to call attention to the indeed “constructed fictional space” of Westview. The inside is characterized by its suburban space and sitcom narrative, which draw heavily upon cultural intertexts. As the series’ narrative progresses, it is made clear that the environment is protected from threatening outside forces through a boundary force field. The ‘living’ characters appearing in this space consist of the members of Wanda’s little family: her husband The Vision who also appeared as her partner in previous MCU material, and in later episodes their two children. Some recurring ‘neighbourhood characters’ also appear. While the former drive the series’ narrative forward, the latter only appear to fill up the suburban space to establish and resemble a form of reality. Throughout the series, it is revealed that Wanda is in fact in control of the boundary and the environment. She furthermore is in full control of the actors in the space; she can manipulate their emotions, thoughts, and actions. In the constructed fictional space of Westview, Wanda can live happily and peacefully in the bubble of a suburban home with her husband The Vision. They both have the desire to live out the full range of human experience, and to “grow old together” (Episode 8 “Previously On”). While in the past her time with The Vision had always been restricted by time and outside responsibilities (see Infinity War 2018), Wanda deliberately adds another component to the constructed space that allows for an illusion of time passing: the sitcom narrative, embedded in the suburban environment.

In some contemporary cultural media texts, suburbia is far more than a setting or backdrop but rather emphasized so much that it becomes the subject of the story” (Coon 2014, Huq 2013). Coon formulates suburbia as “a concrete spatial arrangement that shapes the everyday lives of the majority of Americans and expresses many of the hopes and fears embedded within American society.” Furthermore, the idea of a perfect suburban life exists in the collective imagination of millions of Americans. With the trauma that Wanda endured in the past, it seems likely that this space might serve as a means to re-establish boundaries in the fight of managing overwhelming emotional experiences. It finds social recognition, is made stable through all sorts of rules that govern behaviour, and outlines a certain way of living, which is described by Betty Friedan in her feminist work The Feminine Mystique (1963). Friedan talks about the restricted lives of women living in the domestic space of suburban homes: having to give up on personal dreams and careers to serve their husbands and bear children, and getting married early. While being occupied all day, every day with various tasks to be done around the house, the unhappiness of women comes from a place of unfulfillment. This, however, creates a stable narrative for Wanda. Her mental space that is desperate for stability and a peaceful, strictly regulated environment, can thrive in the strict role that she assumes, simply because it does not require her to make independent decisions. Wanda only needs to follow rules, without a Self to maintain. Furthermore, Wanda with her ‘superhero’ powers and her synthezoid husband need to fit into Westview’s society. Revealing their ‘outside-ness’ is not only a cause for concern, but the consequential pressure that comes from having to fit in becomes a recurrent theme throughout the series – which can only be countered with strict adherence to established norms and the alignment with the shared values and identities of their community (Coon 104, 109). When Wanda seals herself into this mind-numbing, but safe space, she can disavow and reject all negative and traumatic thoughts (Caruth, King). Which is exactly what Wanda longs for.

“When episode 1 begins we’re immediately thrown straight into WandaVision’s sitcom format. Therefore, as the audience, we’re completely sealed into this world as if the rest of the MCU doesn’t exist” (ScreenCrush 2021). This quote points towards the stylistic break with previous MCU material, but also towards WandaVision’s exceptional intertextual layers that contribute to its immersive power. The narrative of (almost) every episode grafts onto sitcom narratives that have been part of popular culture (Black 2021, Dalton and Linder 2005). Together with the characters, the audience travels through a history of sitcoms on the screen, starting in episode 1 with the 1950s sitcoms Leave It To Beaver (1957-63) and I Love Lucy (1951-57), up until sitcoms like The Office (2005-2013) and Modern Family (2009-2020). The inspiration of these shifting sitcom intertexts is reflected in every episode in a distinct vibe and narrative style. It also serves to show Wanda’s environment as being constantly in flux: characters have diverse fashion styles, the living environment varies, and most notably there are profound changes to the stylistic mise-en-scene that includes framing and colour. | In the past, television was often considered to offer escapism from the shackles and troubles of everyday life, while also reflecting on prevalent social norms. The portrayal of a specific image about gender roles, for example, consolidated it into a social practice (in this instance, Haralovich describes the female ‘homemaker’ of the 1950s). Therefore, similar to the suburban discourse adhering to the “reality of the illusion”, one must once again follow the rules and consequently give away control. As the form of the narrative changes in each episode, characters gain different agencies. Most visible is the process of our heroine from being the constricted housewife to openly talking in an interview format similar to Modern Family about themes like depression and relationship troubles. As alluded to in a previous paragraph, the sitcom narrative also serves as the illusion of time passing. Over the course of nine episodes, the characters are made to live through seven decades, which are indicated by the sitcom narratives. ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

The typically American core substance of the series brings an interesting angle to Wanda’s persona. Episode 8, for example, reveals that Wanda has a deep emotional connection to sitcoms. During her childhood in the fictional country Sokovia, she and her family would often watch American sitcoms together to improve their English-speaking skills, before a bombing destroyed their home and resulted in the death of the parents. By anchoring her constructed environment of Westview onto sitcoms, Wanda allows herself to look back to a time and place where she felt safe and loved, and finds comfort in that place of the past. She imagines, and from there on, creates the utopian world where she is safe, protected, and reunited with deceased loved ones, such as her husband. In the land of sitcom narratives, where, no matter what, episodes end happily, every confrontation or conflict is resolved peacefully, and there are no major threats, Wanda has the ability to construct her peace. As she says herself as a child: “At the end of the episode, you realize it was all a bad dream. None of it was real” (Episode 8). 

In the almost Lacanian imaginary of Wanda’s safety fantasy where she shuts out reality to avoid facing her trauma, the audience is curious about pulling away the curtains to reveal the coherent picture behind. In the eighth episode (“Previously On”), Wanda is forced to work through her memories by an outside threat, and has to relive her trauma. While the series is already saturated with cracks that disrupt the illusion, there are two instances with significant, intended shock moments for both Wanda and the knowing audience that serve as painful reminders of past traumatic deaths of her loved ones. This episode then delves even deeper and allows an intense perspective into the pain and grief upon losing the people closest to her. Wanda suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the psychiatric syndrome that arises out of the experience of trauma. She experienced the death of her loved ones: both of her parents, later her twin brother Pietro (Avengers: Age of Ultron, 2015), her husband The Vision (Avengers: Infinity War, 2018); and she is also responsible for multiple deaths due to not being able to handle her incredibly intense powers (Captain America: Civil War, 2016). Her husband was there for her when she was working through the grief caused by her brother’s death. But after the Vision was murdered, Wanda has nothing and no one, except the massive wound caused by her many losses.

The testimony that is embedded in the series’ narrative is situated in a feminine sphere, as WandaVision’s story is told from her point of view. The immersive atmosphere of the series itself and the “show” Wanda puts on, allows for the engagement of the audience with her trauma and even creates a space for self-identification and self-insertion. The whole series is saturated with Wanda’s pain. In Ahmed and Stacey’s text about Testimonial Cultures (2001), they describe a recent trend or even a “desire to testify (that) now pervades contemporary culture”, that the series follows. This includes the desire of wanting pain to be recognized, even felt by others. Elaine Scarry, furthermore, suggests that pain is a bodily trauma that resists or even ‘shatters’ language and communication. Recalling trauma’s disruptive nature that was mentioned in the introduction, the moments of impact and its consequences are painfully inscribed on the body (Ahmed 23). In the last episode, it indeed becomes visible that the inhabitants of the suburban sphere (that act out desired scenarios), experienced Wanda’s pain with her. This pain literally haunts their thoughts (Caruth, Brown).

The series’ narrative, however, also demonstrates that Wanda’s pain and trauma act as agents and motivation of her extraordinary abilities. Precisely because of the trauma she experiences, and having no one to help her with the “endless nothingness” that she feels, she finally exerts control over her powerful abilities that cause harm to people before. The fact that Wanda’s control over her powers apparently grows stronger through the traumatic events that are inflicted upon her but that she manages to live through, suggests that one can grow stronger and more resilient despite traumatic events. One might find something positive in a world that otherwise seemed hopeless and empty. While WandaVision is part of popular culture – therefore, its narrative is clearly dramatized for the sake of entertainment – it still might give hope and power to trauma survivors.  

The original version of this essay was handed in for the course American Popular Culture that is part of the BA-Programme of Arts and Culture Studies.

References

Ahmed, Sara. “Introduction: Feel Your Way.” The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Edinburg UP Ltd, 2004, pp. 1-20.

Ahmed, Sara. “The Contingency of Pain.” The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Edinburg UP Ltd, 2004, pp. 20-41.

Ahmed, Sara, and Jackie Stacey. “Testimonial cultures: An introduction.” Cultural Values, Vol. 5, No. 1, January 2001, pp. 1-6.

Avengers: Age of Ultron. Directed by Joss Whedon, Marvel Studios, performance by Elizabeth Olsen, 2015. Film.

Avengers: Infinity War. Directed by Joe Russo and Anthony Russo, performance by Elizabeth Olsen, Marvel Studios, 2018. Film.

Black, Jack. “Suburban Heroes: Utopia and Trauma in WandaVision.” CST Online, Feb 26 2021, https://cstonline.net/suburban-superheroes-utopia-and-trauma-in-wandavision-by-jack-black/. Last accessed 05 May 1.22 am.

Brown, Laura S. “Not Outside The Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, The John Hopkins UP, 1995, pp. 100-112.

Carlson, Eve B., et al. “Chapter 7: Relationships Between Traumatic Experiences and Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress, Dissociation, and Amnesia.” Trauma, Memory, and Dissociation, edited by J. Douglas Bremner, and Charles R. Marmar, American Psychiatric Press, Inc., 1998.

Caruth, Cathy. “Trauma and Experience: Introduction.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, The John Hopkins UP, 1995, pp. 3-12.

Caruth, Cathy. “Recapturing the Past: Introduction.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, The John Hopkins UP, 1995, pp. 151-157.

Captain America: Civil War. Directed by Joe Russo and Anthony Russo, Marvel Studios, 2018. Film.

Coon, David R. Look Closer: Suburban Narratives and America Values in Film and Television. Rutgers UP, 2014.

Dalton, Mary M. and Laura R. Linder, editors. The Sitcom Reader: America Viewed and Skewed. State U of New York P, 2005.

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1963.

Gottdiener, Mark. The Theming Of America – American Dreams, Media Fantasies, and Themed Environments. Westview Press, 2nd Edition, 2001.

Haralovich, Mary Beth. “Sitcoms and Suburbs: Positioning the 1950s Homemaker.” Quar. Rev. of Film & Video, Harwood Academic Publishers, Vol. 11, 1989, pp. 61-83.

Huq, Rupa. “Women on the Edge? Representations of the Post-War Suburban Woman in Popular Culture to the Present Day.” Making Sense of Suburbia through Popular Culture, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013, pp. 133–159.

King, Nicola. Memory, Narrative, Identity – Remembering the Self. Edinburgh UP, 2000.

Rodin Gary, et al. “Chapter 5: Trauma, Dissociation, and Somatization.”  Trauma, Memory, and Dissociation, edited by J. Douglas Bremner and Charles R. Marmar, American Psychiatric Press, Inc., 1998.

ScreenCrush. “WandaVision: What’s the Point?: Everything Explained + Full Marvel Series      Breakdown.” YouTube, 16 March 2021,                                       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr_ChCww4SU. Last accessed 10 June 2021.

WandaVision. Created by Jac Schaeffer, Marvel Studios, 2021. Television series.

The World Under Lockdown: Empty Spaces in the Photographs of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Written by Airin Rezazadeh Farahmand

Before 2020, we probably needed to rely on science-fiction movies and dystopian novels to imagine a global pandemic. By now, however, we are all well aware of what a world stricken by an infectious disease looks like. In late 2019, a number of pneumonia cases of unknown etiology were reported to the World Health Organization by Chinese authorities. Soon after, it was discovered that the cases were caused by a new virus (now familiar to all of us by the name COVID-19) that apparently has succeeded in crossing the species barriers. The anxieties over the rapid spread of this new virus was well reflected in the title of CNN’s report, published on 7 January 2020: “A mysterious virus is making China (and the rest of Asia) nervous. It’s not SARS, so what is it?”. This new virus was not nerve-wracking only for Asia. Proven to be highly contagious, it quickly turned into a global concern.  In the space of a few months, the virus caused a global pandemic, which is still on-going as I’m writing these lines today. 

Although the outbreak evoked different responses in different countries, the common reaction was the emergence of new norms and regulations. Handshaking was considered too dangerous. Face masks and gloves became part of daily outfits. Access to public spaces was limited and large gatherings were prohibited. The outbreak not only heralded fundamental changes in the ways people used to live and interact with each other but also changed the meaning of social spaces drastically. With people being advised to stay at home, work remotely and avoid unnecessary commuting, internet communication replaced face-to-face interaction. The ramifications of living in this new world, highly reliant on virtual spaces, were reflected in a number of cultural practices including photography. Photos capturing empty public spaces as the result of the imposed lockdowns proliferated social media soon after the start of the outbreak.  The photos of these emptied out spaces became an effective way of documenting the visual impact of the pandemic on our daily lives.  Like most crises captured in modern times, the camera not only became a tool of documentation, providing factual accounts of what was going on in the world, but also shaped a visual narrative through which the pandemic was framed. 

It is important to note that emptiness should not be taken at its face value, as it is never devoid of cultural and social significance. Courtney J. Campbell,  Allegra Giovine and Jennifer Keating, for instance, in their book Empty Spaces: perspectives on emptiness in modern history, show how emptiness is not merely an indicator of the absence of the usual content of life, but rather  a sign of disruption in more abstract qualities that are deeply implicated in our economic, political and social systems (5). Similarly, by depicting cities without human subjects and deprived of their social function, the photos of empty public spaces reflect on our anxieties of living in a highly globalized world, where the likelihood of a biological disaster threatening our very existence as human species seems more real than ever. These anxieties are not a new phenomenon. In fact, they have been repeatedly depicted in fiction, most notably in post-apocalyptic and dystopian movies. Therefore, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the images of empty spaces depicting the recent pandemic bear strong resemblance to the already-existing ones in popular culture. The iconic opening sequence of Francis Lawrence’s 2007 movie I am Legend starts with an aerial shot of New York City that is peculiarly vacant. The protagonist journeys through the deserted streets of the city which have clearly fallen into decay and have been taken over by nature. Similarly, Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion (2011), uses the same strategy to show how the spread of the virus has disrupted normal daily life. In shots that interestingly share a great deal of similarity to the photos depicting the recent pandemic, we see empty gyms, conference rooms, churches and stations indicating the interruption of the normal flow of everyday life.

In his analysis of the American zombie series The Walking Dead (AMC, 2010–) and the British production Survivors (BBC, 2008–10), Martin Walter explains that emptiness in these types of movies is used as a way of commenting on the structures of our contemporary capitalist society.  According to Walter, the familiarity of these spaces raises critical questions about the efficiency of the previous order which has clearly failed. As he puts it, “the repeated motif of journeying through empty landscapes conveys ideological viewpoints on capitalist spaces. These spaces increasingly address both a ‘perturbed familiarity’ and discourses of global (in)security” (134). Therefore, emptiness in these movies raises critical concerns about the reliability of the capitalist system that has left us vulnerable to threats such as a global pandemic. Similarly, Dora Apel argues, “by depicting our technologically advanced civilization in states of ruination and decay, post-apocalyptic narratives render our own society as other and encourage us to ask whether the empire of capital represents lasting progress or a road to decline” (152).

The fear of the so-called “next pandemic”, the one that will bring humanity to the end, is engraved in the popular culture of our time. The recurring theme of dystopian futures as a result of human activity in post-apocalyptic fiction, mirrors concerns over many pressing issues among which globalization, rapid technological advances, public health, safety, surveillance, (in)security and the possibility of human extinction stand out.  The photos of empty cities following the corona crisis, therefore, rely in part on the familiar iconography of the previous cultural products to form their visual narrative and evoke a sublime sense of fear in the viewer. Emptiness, in this context, is a key visual trope that addresses the same concerns and issues regarding the structures of our contemporary societies that are raised in fictional works. It gains its meaning when the depicted public spaces are compared to their pre-pandemic state when they were filled with people. In this sense, emptiness becomes a crucial aesthetic tool that dysfunctionalizes our social spaces, presenting them as eerie and uncanny. Freud used the term ‘uncanny’ (‘unheimlich’ in German, literally ‘un-homely’) to suggest a psychological origin for the eerie, peculiar feeling of fear that arises from the confrontation with something familiar that has suddenly turned into its opposite. Accordingly, the uncanny is located on the margin between real and unreal, constantly stressing the boundaries between the two. Similarly, in the photos of empty public spaces, popular destinations marked by their crowd suddenly have turned into unfamiliar venues with almost no human presence. The familiarity that lies at the heart of these barely recognizable spaces, stripped off their social function, adds to the uncanny quality of these photos. 

In his seminal work The Architectural Uncanny, Anthony Vidler uses Freud’s notion to explain the spatial characteristics of the places that can provoke this feeling of uncanniness in the visitors. As Vidler explains, what stimulates the feeling of uncanny in the space, is not related to particular spatial conformations as this feeling is not a property of the space itself. Rather, it is in its aesthetic dimension and is created when a space that pretends to offer the utmost security suddenly opens itself to the secret intrusion of terror (3). Uncanny as an aesthetic quality of space is what renders it strange due to an alien presence. It is, as Vidler puts it, “a representation of a mental state of projection that precisely elides the boundaries of the real and the unreal in order to provoke a disturbing ambiguity, a slippage between waking and dreaming” (11). If we look at the photos of the pandemic, emptiness seems to create a liminal space between reality and fantasy. Although the settings have remained the same, the absence of the usual crowd indicates the presence of an alien Other that disallows us to freely enter into these spaces. Being marked as unsafe, these public spaces, without their crowd, look almost like private properties. The emptiness in the photos, therefore, seem to ignite curiosity in the viewers to ask themselves what will happen to public spaces? What will remain of them? These questions are indeed important since they guide us to begin thinking about our conditions as human beings living in the twenty-first century. The photos, therefore, become the spatial visualization of a breakdown in our contemporary world systems by suggesting that emptiness might become the new normal. By visually referencing the already-existing apocalyptic images in popular culture, they build on our contemporary anxieties regarding the possibility of human extinction by emphasizing the human absence in urban settings. It may be too naive to believe that such a thing would be the case. However, even if we accept this prophecy as a form of cultural exaggeration, the criticism that is directed towards the capitalist system that has shaped our century is still very valid and mirrors deep concerns that are inherently embedded in the zeitgeist of our era.

Works Cited:

Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely (MIT press, 1992).

Courtney J. Campbell, Allegra Giovine, and Jennifer Keating, eds., introduction to Empty Spaces: Perspectives on Emptiness in Modern History ( University of London Press, 2019).

Dora Apel, Beautiful terrible ruins: Detroit and the anxiety of decline (Rutgers University Press, 2015).

Martin Walter, “Landscapes of loss: the semantics of empty spaces in contemporary post-apocalyptic fiction” in Empty Spaces: Perspectives on emptiness in modern history, eds. Courtney J.Campbell, Allegra Giovine, and Jennifer Keating (London University Press, 2019), 133-51.

Black Panther Transmedia: The Revolution Will Not Be Streamed

Written by Niels Niessen

The following text is the introduction of a longer essay published in the Journal for Cinema and Media Studies (2021), https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/idx/j/jcms/18261332.0060.506/–black-panther-transmedia-the-revolution-will-not-be-streamed?rgn=main;view=fulltext.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Black Panther figure of Marvel’s comic book universe were both created in 1966. There was no direct link, however, between the political organization that Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton launched in October that year and the introduction of the first superhero character of African descent a few months earlier in May, in an issue of Fantastic Four (vol. 1, no. 52), which was authored by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Introducing the Black Panther in Fantastic Four, no. 52 (Marvel Comics, 1966).

As Lee states in a 2009 interview:

It was a strange coincidence because, at the time I did the Black Panther, there was a political party in the country— mostly Black people— and they were called The Black Panthers. And I didn’t think of that at all! It had nothing to do with our character, although a lot of people thought there was some tie- in. And I was really sorry— maybe if I had to do it over again, I’d given him another name, because I hate that confusion to be caused. But it really had nothing to do with the then-existing Black Panthers (cited in Clark 2018).  

The 2018 film Black Panther directed by Ryan Coogler also does not make explicit reference to the Black Panther Party. But the film’s promotional materials do indirectly invoke the historical reality in which both Black Panthers appeared in the late 1960s cultural air. One of the film’s promotional posters depicts T’Challa— the reigning Black Panther— in visual citation of the iconic 1967 portrait of Huey P. Newton, seated on a throne, a rifle in one hand, a spear in the other (a photo that in turn was a mockery of colonialist portraiture). Moreover, one of the film’s trailers contains remixed samples of Gil Scott- Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televized,” a track from 1970, which is also the year Black Panther Party membership reached a peak. In this trailer, as the Black Panther flies across the screen, a male voice- over cites the following, tuned to the beat of Vince Staples’s “BagBak” (2017):

            You will not be able to stay home, brother.
            You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out. . . .

            The revolution will not be televised. . . .
            The revolution will be live.

Marvel thus links its Black Panther universe to the long history of African American struggle. These offhand gestures beg the question of how Black Panther’s mainstream Afrofuturism holds up to the political activism it invokes. Does the film merely commodify revolutionary discourse, and wouldn’t such commodification prevent the film from constituting an “act of civic imagination,” as Henry Jenkins has called the film? (Jenkins 2018) Doesn’t Black Panther’s production by Marvel, a subsidiary of Disney, by definition preempt the film from its claim to politics— especially when recalling the imperative of turn-of-the-1970s Third Cinema that a political film must also be made politically? And how to square Black Panther’s imagination of a never-colonized Black nation with Achille Mbembe’s analysis of “Blackness” as a discursive product of colonization?

Addressing these questions, it is important to acknowledge the wide acclaim Black Panther has received from within the African American community. During a special event in Harlem’s Apollo Theater, Ta-Nehisi Coates described the film as “Star Wars for Black People,” sharing with the audience that he “didn’t realize how much [he] needed the film, a hunger for a myth that [addressed] feeling separated and feeling reconnected [to Africa]” (cited in Beta 2018). Similarly, Tre Johnson writes that Black Panther’s greatest legacy is that Black viewers find “a cultural oasis that feels like nothing we’ve seen before” (cited in Johnson 2018). And as Jenkins observes, Black Panther offered “a shared myth desperately needed in the age of Trump: the film inspired many different forms of participatory culture . . . as people fused its iconography into their personal and social identity” (Jenkins 2018).

So yes, following its release, Black Panther has undeniably manifested itself as a political-cultural event, but this does not, of course, prevent a critical reading of the film. That critique is the gravitational point of this essay. I argue that, taken on its own, the Black Panther film only marginally integrates its offhand promotional references to the history of African American resistance. Despite its multiracial cast and strong female characters, Black Panther at the end of the day is built on a conventional Hollywood logic, while its plot purports an anthropocentric American Dream narrative in which humanity masters nature through technology. (Figure 2)

Figure 2. Technology as second nature in Black Panther (Marvel Studios, 2018).

Yet the film cannot just be considered on its own. The film emerges out of and inscribes itself into a transmedia franchise that in recent decades has evolved as a platform for rethinking African American identity in the post–civil rights era. This has been the case under the authorship of Christopher Priest (who wrote the 1998 Black Panther comics volume on which the movie was largely based), Coates (who picked up the comics’ authorship in 2016, starting with A Nation Under Our Feet), and Kendrick Lamar (who cocurated the film’s soundtrack, including the hit single “All the Stars,” performed with the American singer SZA). As Coates writes elsewhere, in Between the World and Me (2015), the dreamed synergy between nature and technology at the heart of the American Dream is an all-too-human construction torching the planet, socially and literally (Coates 2015).

Figure 3. Black Panther’s science fiction of a nation shielded from global heating.

The Black Panther film revels in such phantasmagoric synergy, telling a fairy tale of an extractive utopia, while it has no sight for the exploitation of bodies and ecosystems that marks the reality of every mining economy (Figure 3). In that light Black Panther is like, say, Apple’s new American Dream, in which technology is posited as second nature and which was equally designed in California. Only when the film is considered in the light of its broader transmedia universe does its superhero texture open to the speculative potential that Michael Gillespie and others have embraced as central to film Blackness. As I will argue in the final section, “The Fire in the Sky,” at those moments Black Panther invites its transmedia traveler to think through what Mbembe calls the “Becoming Black of the world” (Mbembe 2017).

Niels Niessen is a Researcher in the Arts & Culture department.

For the full article and bibliographic references see:

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/idx/j/jcms/18261332.0060.506/–black-panther-transmedia-the-revolution-will-not-be-streamed?rgn=main;view=fulltext

“My Age Really Doesn’t Matter”: Norms on Young Motherhood

By Marijke Sniekers

This article has been part of the ‘Women On The Timeline‘ protect, initiated by Anouk Wolkotte and Charlotte Hermanns.

Daniëlle[1], an 18-year-old mother, speaks of becoming a mother: “It really doesn’t matter whether you are young or old. It’s all new and will be hard at times.”Young mothers continuously need to prove that they are great moms, successful and that they deserve respect like any other woman/mother/youngster. They often need to fight stigmas and stereotypes of being incapable of raising children, being a moral and socioeconomic problem and a risk to themselves and their children.

The ‘problem’ of young motherhood (under the age of 24 years) in the Netherlands seems not so big, considering the low numbers of young mothers in the country. Teenage fertility rates in the Netherlands are the second lowest in Europe, and among the 10 lowest in the world. In Dutch society in the 1950s, young motherhood was common. The mean childbearing age for women has risen from 24 years (1970) to 30 years (2019). Nowadays, young motherhood is uncommon and undesirable.

Until 1955, women were legally ‘incompetent’ and could be laid off from civil service once they married. Equal pay for equal work was legalised in that year. Since then, norms about women’s economic independence have started to change. From the late 1980s, women have entered the labour market in large numbers, leading to current high labour market participation of women. Unfortunately, women still receive unequal pay for equal work, experience an unequal gender and age bias in selection for and promotion at work (‘glass ceiling’), and face discriminatory practices at work due to pregnancy. Expectations for women have not changed much in terms of work-care balance and the gender division of labour. Women are commonly expected to become mothers.

Dutch norms on motherhood, education and employment constitute a motherhood ideology of viewing women as child carers and men as breadwinners. This means that mothers should be the main carers, should always be present for their children, and should focus primarily on their children’s needs. Unlike in most European countries, heterosexual couples in the Netherlands commonly conform to the 1.5 wage earner model, according to which men usually work full-time and women part-time in so-called ‘mother contracts’ of work during children’s school hours. Women generally perform the unpaid care and household tasks, even when they also have full-time paid employment. Formally, parental leave days have increased for fathers in paid employment. However, in reality are men reluctant to take leave, because of traditional role patterns at home, because work culture does not facilitate it and because of a lack of role models.

Young mothers are caught in the middle of such stereotypical, dominant gender patterns and norms around motherhood, care and employment. On the one hand, as youngsters they are expected to be in school and continue with paid employment. On the other hand, as mothers they are expected to stay at home and care for the children. You are a good mother if you take care of your child yourself and are there for your child. Young people are expected to complete the highest possible education, after which they find a job at that level and in that sector. After that they can settle down with their partner and have children.

Such dilemmas and norms regarding the socioeconomic independence of young mothers were the focus of my PhD study, for which I spend time with young mothers. Daniëlle (quoted above) explains that any first-time parent experiences difficulties and struggles with new responsibilities and structure in daily life. Femke explains how lack of support from a partner made raising her child difficult, because she could not share the responsibility with someone else: “I had to rely on myself and have been sacrificing my own needs”. Manon and Agnes say that combining school and work with caring for children is hard, since their parents cannot babysit (they have their own jobs) and day-care is too expensive or does not match their working hours on weekends and evenings as a nurse. Their stories illustrate that it is not their young age, but circumstances such as being a new mom, a single parent or working parent that led to problems in their lives.

Attending education or going to work is often a practical puzzle for many young mothers, especially single ones. Manon says: “I had a night shift at my work, and when I came back, I made my child his sandwiches, took my child to school and then his teacher said: ‘You look bad.’ And I said, ‘I haven’t slept yet.’ That was hard.” Some women say that they do not have children to have them cared for by day-care or relatives. They feel a strong need and pressure from people around them to be present for their child, instead of completing their education or working. Floor wants to be a role model to her child, which is expected of her from a motherhood perspective. However, this is ‘bad’ from a motherhood ideal, because working and earning wages means she cannot take care of her child herself all day. Even with policies and subsidies in place, young mothers still face contradicting norms. Studying and working parents can receive subsidies for day-care, but schools and the state do not offer free childcare facilities, so young parents have to pay for private childcare services. Policies and organisational structures that are supposed to increase young people’s socioeconomic independence are, in reality, counterproductive.

Schools, particularly, are not used to students with children. Daphne says: “I was lucky to give birth during Christmas holiday, so I could go back to school two weeks later.” Other student-mothers are lucky to have a teacher that gives extensions for deadlines or extra assignments when the women had to stay home, because their children were ill. However, schools are usually not very flexible in assignments and attendance, and do not provide for maternity leave. Student-mothers do not want any study delay, because that means that they will have to pay back their student grant. Getting into debt because of an education is not a pleasant prospect.

Student grants together with fears of not completing the education within the time limit required for the grant, make young mothers often choose for a practical vocational study (BBL) (instead of theoretical vocational, Bachelor’s or Master’s studies). “I’m smart enough to do a Bachelor’s degree, but my child will be two and I want another child. Combining a Bachelor and a child is harder than doing vocational studies with a child, and vocational is fine too for a job and raising two children” says Valerie.

Young mothers like her are more likely to opt for the practical vocational education (BBL), because at the short term it provides them with work experience, job guarantee and wages they need to provide for their children. For better long-term opportunities, it is, once having started to work, hard for young mothers to get back to school after a few years when their children have reached the school-age of four years. This means they get stuck in a low paid job in which they can hardly plan their own working hours and have to work weekend and night shifts. A low paid job also means that they need to pay all their earnings to the day-care centre. Furthermore, the jobs young mothers end up with when doing a practical vocational study are often jobs in health care of elderly care, affirming traditional gender roles of women as carers.

Despite the developments since the fifties and the policies and subsidies that are in place, these young mother’s stories show the ongoing need to contest gender and age stereotypes leading to inequalities. We need to recognise different values and experiences. Even though young mothers exert agency, this is not enough to reconcile conflicting norms on their own and solve structural problems individually. Dominant norms should not stand in the way of people who walk different pathways than what is commonly expected. This column is based on the results of the study Acknowledging the agency of young mothers: A qualitative study into young, motherhood and socioeconomic independence by Marijke Sniekers

[1] The names of the women are pseudonyms.

The History of Feminism(s) Around the Globe

Women on the Timeline, a project initiated by two of our very own Arts and Culture students, Anouk Wolkotte and Charlotte Hermanns, aims to honour the contributions of women and non-binary folks to our society. Because many of those are still missing in our collective memory, Charlotte and Anouk wish to create a diverse community to redirect the spotlight, with the hope to inspire young women and girls. They publish articles written by their team of permanent writers thrice a week. Guests are invited to contribute as well! The history of feminism and topics related to diversity and inclusion are explored in a monthly column, which we will be publishing on this Culture Weekly website. Find them on Instagram: @w_o_t_t   Facebook: @WomenOnTheTimeline Mail: womenonthetimeline@gmail.com and contact them if this project sparks your interest!

We now present the first article of the column:

The History of Feminism(s) Around the Globe – Written by Saskia Bultman

When you think of feminism nowadays your mind might go to #metoo, pink ‘pussy’ hats or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s famous TED talk on ‘We should all be feminists’. But what are the roots of this huge movement? Maybe the best way to talk about the history of feminism, is to look at how this history has been told in the past, and how it is told today.
The history of feminism is traditionally told – in Western countries, school books and popular culture – as a series of ‘waves’. In this narrative, first-wave feminism (roughly late 19th-early 20th century) was focused on overcoming legal obstacles, and focused on issues such as the right to vote, or, suffrage. Second-wave feminism (1960s-1970s) had a more cultural focus, and criticized sexist institutions and practices of discrimination, focusing on issues such as the limited expectations of marriage and motherhood for women, reproductive rights such as access to abortion and birth control, rape, domestic violence and equal pay. Third-wave feminism (1990s-2000s) focused on a more intersectional understanding of feminism, criticizing former feminist movements for excluding non-white and working-class women. Besides becoming more inclusive of women of colour, the third wave also focused on sexuality, redefining women and girls as powerful and in control. Fourth-wave feminism (beginning in the early 2010s) focuses on issues such as body shaming, rape culture, #metoo, trans* rights, disability, and the representation of marginalized women in politics, culture and business.
The roots of this series of ‘waves’ are commonly traced back to a standard cast of well-known figures. Traditional histories of feminism begin, for example, with seventeenth-century writers, such as Aphra Behn (a playwright who depicted men and women as equals) and Sarah Fyge
(who, as a teenager, wrote an impassioned poem in defence of women in response to an incredibly misogynist piece of verse by Robert Gould), who drew on Protestant religious traditions to claim women’s equality. The next figures to appear in this version of the story, are those who were inspired by the ideas of equality in the eighteenth-century American and French revolutions, such as the French activist Olympe de Gouges. In response to The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, which asserted, in 1789, that all men ‘are born and remain free and equal in rights’, de Gouges wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, arguing that women should be included in the new revolutionary ideas on equality for all. Next, traditional narratives often move on to the nineteenth-century suffragettes, such as the Pankhursts in England and Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the United States (who campaigned for women’s right to vote), down to later twentieth-century figures such as Betty Friedan (whose work on the discontent of American housewives is said to have sparked the second wave of feminism) and Gloria Steinem (who criticized societal beauty standards in an exposé for which she went undercover as a Playboy ‘Bunny’).
In later years, figures such as the eighteenth-century author Phyllis Wheatley (the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry) and Sojourner Truth (a black abolitionist who demanded equal rights for African-American women) were added to the story.
While all of these figures are undeniably important (as is witnessed by their achievements), the traditional history of feminism remains predominantly white, and focused on the Anglo-Saxon world, particularly England and the United States.
Recently, however, the history of feminism has acquired a broader focus. As Lucy Delap argues in her recent (and really quite thrilling) book Feminisms: A Global History, there isn’t just one story of feminism to be told. Instead, there have been many feminisms, which were all shaped, from the outset, by women and men of varying historical contexts, nationalities, ethnicities, sexualities, ideological backgrounds, classes and ages. The metaphor of the ‘wave’, which presents feminist history as neatly progressing from one set of concerns to another, doesn’t do justice to this complexity. What’s more, it limits our focus to one part of the world.
As Delap shows, throughout at least the last 250 years, in other parts of the world things were happening that were just as much a part of the history of feminism. In 1886, for example, when women were campaigning for the right to vote in Europe and the United States, an anonymous woman in what is now Ghana (then under British rule) wrote a rousing letter to local newspaper Western Echo:
We Ladies of Africa in general are not only sadly misrepresented but are made the foot-ball of every white seal that comes to our Coast … We have been sadly abused by people of such description, and because we have said nothing they continue to abuse us with impunity … Although we have not white or angelic faces we are capable of as high a degree of culture as any white lady.
Examples such as this, from non-Western thinkers (which Delap’s book is packed with), are not often included in traditional histories of feminism. They are important, however, because they illuminate the diversity of the movement and its concerns, and highlight the contributions of non-Western feminists, which are often overlooked. Rather than suffrage, this anonymous
woman’s concern was with an ‘African’ feminism that countered colonial ideas about women of colour.
This is all the more significant, considering that suffragettes in Europe and the United States – who are popularly depicted as the ‘only’ feminists active at the time – often expressed colonial attitudes in their activist work. When Dutch feminist Aletta Jacobs travelled through a series of African and Asian countries in the early twentieth century, for instance, campaigning for women’s right to vote, she characterized herself as a ‘motherly friend’ to the inhabitants of South-Africa, who she described as ‘children … who only need to be led’, as historian Ena Jansen has shown. As we can see, placing different feminist histories alongside each other can make us aware of the divergent struggles women around the globe had – which leads to a whole new narrative.
Viewing feminism in a global framework can also make its history less Eurocentric. With regard to women’s right to higher education, for example, Delap points out that the same developments were taking place all across the world: Britain’s first university college for women opened in 1869, and in Brazil women obtained the right to enter higher education only a decade later, in 1879. Connections like this give us a fuller understanding of the movement’s history, and prevent us from taking Europe or the West as our only reference point.
In her book, Delap calls for a new approach, which involves placing stories of feminisms from different parts of the world and different periods of history alongside each other, and studying their interactions and linkages, as well as the ways in which they were at odds with each other. This leads to a history of the movement that includes figures such as Alexandra Kollontai (an early-twentieth-century Russian revolutionary who advocated for free love) alongside groups
such as the French ‘femmes en lutte’ (who, quite differently, emphasized the maternal qualities of women in the 1970s and 1980s), and figures such as German feminist Karin Schrader-Klebert (who envisioned a universal feminism arguing that ‘women are the Negroes of all nations’) next to African-American activist Frances Beal (who, around the same time, in 1974, envisioned a far narrower brand of feminism when she termed white women the ‘economic enemies’ of black women, saying: ‘If your mother worked in a white woman’s kitchen, she knows what I mean’).
Taking a global view also offers alternative starting points for the history of feminism. Rather than with seventeenth-century English writers or nineteenth-century suffragettes, it might begin in Sierra Leone in 1792, when female householders were given the right to vote (a right they lost when the country came under British colonial rule in 1808), or at the Rosetta Women’s Conference held in 1799, when Egyptian women came together to discuss their gendered roles in society, as Delap shows in her book.
From ‘waves’ of feminism and (white) feminist ‘foremothers’ to the expansion of the feminist canon with other important women (of colour), the telling of the history of feminism has changed over time. Hopefully the new focus on the global history of the movement will lead to new information being uncovered about the concerns, struggles and accomplishments of feminists, past and present, around the globe. Perhaps the stories of Women on the Timeline, which focus on women from all parts of the world and all periods of history, will lead readers to make new, unexpected connections, and prompt them to read about the achievements of women who have been forgotten, but who played an important role in the worldwide history of feminism. Every reader will be able to determine, for herself, which histories, and which feminisms, resonate the most.

Zoom Fashion

By Anneke Smelik

The cover of The New Yorker of 7 Dec. 2020 features a telling cartoon of our daily life during the lockdowns induced by the COVID-19 pandemic: a woman sits in front of her laptop wearing a smart top, her hair in a nice bun, with lipstick and earrings, but underneath she wears sportive shorts showing hairy legs in fluffy slippers. This strange separation between our well-dressed upper parts of our body and relaxed if not partly undressed lower bodies, is so typical of our online lives in front of the camera. Smart from the waist up; relaxed from the waist down. It brings into sharp relief the performative aspect of the way we dress. 

In the beginning of the pandemic, during the first lockdown, as teachers we shared slightly embarrassed exchanges about wearing sweatpants or pyjama bottoms that no one could see. Soon enough the internet was abounding with faux pas of people online wearing a suit, shirt and tie, but with their underpants showing when they got up. Teachers and students alike are quite conscious of their screen presence, which reveals only the top part of the body. Makeup and hair matter more, as do tops, while bottoms and shoes matter less and probably stay locked away in the cupboard. Staring at one’s own face among many others during the online meetings and classes requires new make-up and dressing routines. Combining nice tops that are in view with sweatpants for the part of the body that (hopefully) no one can see, reveals that dress is, after all, performative: we dress not only for ourselves but also for others (Smelik & Kaiser, 2020). We dress for the public gaze. 

This performative aspect of fashion reminds me of the metaphor of the stage that sociologist Erving Goffman (1959) used to characterize presentations of self as performances in everyday life.  As Efrat Tseëlon (2016) has shown, the theatrical metaphor of performance is particularly apt for the study of clothing and appearance. Goffman’s notion of a ‘front region’, the social role that people adopt in society, versus the ‘back region’, where people relax their looks and behaviour, is intimately connected with the ways we dress. The staged, edited and filtered selfies that we put on Instagram or Facebook are clearly intended for the ‘front region’, whereas we are usually reluctant to upload snapshots from the ‘back region’ when we lounge on our couch in a track suit without any make up on. Translating Goffman’s terms to the digital age of Zoom, Teams, virtual classrooms, and other digital meetings, perhaps we can better talk of an ‘upper region’ and a ‘lower region’! Now, the upper region of our body remains out there up front, while the lower part of the body can relax into the invisible back region. 

Clothes are an important part of ‘impression management’, as it has come to be known. In the presence of others, Goffman argues, individuals will try to influence the situation by presenting themselves in a favourable light. In this respect, Goffman makes a difference between the impression that people give intentionally and the impression that they give off unintentionally. We may dress very carefully to make an impression for a Zoom meeting by doing our hair and applying makeup, putting on a nice top and jewellery, but may give off quite a different impression by getting up in haste showing a pyjama bottom, or worse, underwear. Our online lives are still sustained by normative expectations and tacit rules of embodied presentation: the performance goes on, even if the camera reduces us to ‘talking heads’. 

I am probably not the only one who misses wearing (and showing off) beautiful shoes, and who is slightly fed up with wearing Uggs, however comfortable at home. It cannot be any coincidence that fashion designers have come up with ‘Zoom fashion’, focusing on the ‘waist-up’, with detailed necklines and relaxed trousers (Criddle, 2020). We may not be able to afford such expensive brands, but I have come across a fun solution for Zoom fashion: the work-at-home sweater that looks like a business suit. This certainly helps to create the right impression management. So, while the lockdown lasts, I will try to keep my desire for swirling skirts and smart trousers on hold, and have fun with Zoom fashion by mismatching business-like tops with totally relaxed bottoms. 

References

Criddle, Cristina, ‘Fashion brands design ‘waist-up’ clothing for video calls’. BBC News, 20 september 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54327987

Goffman, Erving (1959), The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin.

Anneke Smelik and Susan Kaiser, ‘Performing fashion’. Editorial introduction to Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, vol 11 nr 2, 2020: 117-128. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00012_2

Tseëlon, Efrat (2016),  ‘Erving Goffman: Social science as an art of cultural observation’. In Agnès Rocamora & Anneke Smelik (eds.) Thinking Through Fashion. A Guide to Key Theorists. London: Bloomsbury, 149-164.