Pub Date : 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2022-0202
Ilios Willemars
This article performs a close reading of HAVEN, a 2023 digital video installation by James Newitt. It analyses the way in which the work discusses issues around privacy, surveillance, and the management of digital data. Newitt’s work tells the story of how an abandoned anti-aircraft defence tower off the Suffolk coast in the North Sea was turned first into a pirate radio station and then into a data haven; a collection of servers meant to avoid early Internet regulation. Investigating the many ways in which HAVEN can be understood as noisy, a concept borrowed from Michel Serres, this article proposes that Newitt’s work is at its most generative in its suggestion of a theory of (auto-)immunity that complicates contemporary discussions of privacy centred on visibility (Derrida, Foucault). Moving away from a model of surveillance, and drawing on the work of Philip E. Agre, this text seeks to understand the dynamics of power made visible in HAVEN with reference to the notion of capture. The article proposes that HAVEN’s poetics are of interest both aesthetically and in terms of content as they examine a contemporary territorial logic of the Internet and its connections to empire.
本文对詹姆斯-纽威特(James Newitt)于 2023 年创作的数字视频装置作品《HAVEN》进行了细读。文章分析了该作品讨论隐私、监控和数字数据管理问题的方式。纽威特的作品讲述了北海萨福克海岸边一座废弃的防空塔如何先被改造成海盗电台,然后又被改造成数据避难所的故事;这是一个服务器集合体,旨在规避早期的互联网监管。本文研究了从米歇尔-塞雷斯(Michel Serres)那里借用的 "嘈杂"(noisisy)概念的多种理解方式,认为纽维特的作品最有创造性的地方在于提出了一种(自动)免疫理论,这种理论将当代以可见性为中心的隐私讨论(德里达、福柯)复杂化了。本文从监视模式出发,借鉴菲利普-E-阿格雷(Philip E. Agre)的研究成果,试图通过 "捕获 "这一概念来理解《哈瓦》中可见的权力动态。文章认为,《HAVEN》的诗学在美学和内容方面都很有意义,因为它们审视了当代互联网的地域逻辑及其与帝国的联系。
{"title":"Data that Should Not Have Been Given: Noise and Immunity in James Newitt’s HAVEN","authors":"Ilios Willemars","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0202","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article performs a close reading of HAVEN, a 2023 digital video installation by James Newitt. It analyses the way in which the work discusses issues around privacy, surveillance, and the management of digital data. Newitt’s work tells the story of how an abandoned anti-aircraft defence tower off the Suffolk coast in the North Sea was turned first into a pirate radio station and then into a data haven; a collection of servers meant to avoid early Internet regulation. Investigating the many ways in which HAVEN can be understood as noisy, a concept borrowed from Michel Serres, this article proposes that Newitt’s work is at its most generative in its suggestion of a theory of (auto-)immunity that complicates contemporary discussions of privacy centred on visibility (Derrida, Foucault). Moving away from a model of surveillance, and drawing on the work of Philip E. Agre, this text seeks to understand the dynamics of power made visible in HAVEN with reference to the notion of capture. The article proposes that HAVEN’s poetics are of interest both aesthetically and in terms of content as they examine a contemporary territorial logic of the Internet and its connections to empire.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139635856","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2022-0204
Georgina Abreu
{"title":"Erratum to “‘Thrice the brindled cat hath mew’d’ – The Three Trials of William Hone”","authors":"Georgina Abreu","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0204","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139632066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2024-0001
Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi
The American West is not just a geographical terrain but a mythical construct that occupies a powerful place in the popular imagination thanks to myriad literary and artistic works that have presented the region through specific archetypes emphasizing its vast ruggedness, white masculinity, and unique Americanness. In recent decades, revisionist scholarly and artistic works, however, have attempted to offer more nuanced perspectives on the region challenging its assumed homogenous history and fixed and stable identity. In particular, women filmmakers have recast the region through multifaceted representations underlining its complexity, diversity, and transnational dimensions. This article analyzes Vera Brunner-Sung’s film Bella Vista (2014) to examine how the film intervenes in previously constructed representations of the American West through its emphasis on transience, displacement, and belonging. Set and made in Montana, the film employs a “slow cinema” aesthetic to offer deep insights into the local and global dynamics of the place as well as the formation of identity and (un)belonging within a Western landscape. The film, as the article argues, provides a reconsideration of the West through diverse localities that are in constant relation with the outside and in turn have generated diverse individual experiences regarding the place.
{"title":"Montana as Place of (Un)Belonging: Landscape, Identity, and the American West in Bella Vista (2014)","authors":"Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi","doi":"10.1515/culture-2024-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2024-0001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The American West is not just a geographical terrain but a mythical construct that occupies a powerful place in the popular imagination thanks to myriad literary and artistic works that have presented the region through specific archetypes emphasizing its vast ruggedness, white masculinity, and unique Americanness. In recent decades, revisionist scholarly and artistic works, however, have attempted to offer more nuanced perspectives on the region challenging its assumed homogenous history and fixed and stable identity. In particular, women filmmakers have recast the region through multifaceted representations underlining its complexity, diversity, and transnational dimensions. This article analyzes Vera Brunner-Sung’s film Bella Vista (2014) to examine how the film intervenes in previously constructed representations of the American West through its emphasis on transience, displacement, and belonging. Set and made in Montana, the film employs a “slow cinema” aesthetic to offer deep insights into the local and global dynamics of the place as well as the formation of identity and (un)belonging within a Western landscape. The film, as the article argues, provides a reconsideration of the West through diverse localities that are in constant relation with the outside and in turn have generated diverse individual experiences regarding the place.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140524274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2022-0196
Matteo Bächtold
To understand a text, or any other form of art work, as referring to a disease is not always obvious. This uncertainty, although confined to rare cases, nevertheless allows us to explore the limits and blind spots of certain frameworks proposed to think about the relationship between art and disease, notably Susan Sontag’s book Ilness as metaphor. In this article, I take a closer look at the calamity described in chapters 5 and 6 of the first book of Samuel and its various exegeses in the Western World. This calamity (still considered by many to be a bubonic plague), was not associated with the pandemic imaginary by ancient commentators, artists, and doctors, and it is only in modern times that medical diagnoses of the text change in this sense. I propose to see that these seemingly innocuous changes in diagnostic interpretations actually reflect deep changes in the relation between illness and divine agency. After a brief critical review of Susan Sontag’s writings on interpretation and their relationship to Ilness as Metaphor, I will proceed to trace the complex interpretation history of this calamity, before drawing observations about the place of interpretation in literary criticism and in the medical sciences.
将文本或任何其他形式的艺术作品理解为一种疾病并不总是显而易见的。这种不确定性虽然仅限于极少数情况,但却让我们得以探索某些思考艺术与疾病之间关系的框架的局限性和盲点,尤其是苏珊-桑塔格(Susan Sontag)的《作为隐喻的疾病》(Ilness as metaphor)一书。在本文中,我将仔细研究《撒母耳记》第一卷第五章和第六章中描述的灾难及其在西方世界的各种诠释。这场灾难(许多人仍然认为是鼠疫)并没有被古代的注释家、艺术家和医生与大流行病的想象联系起来,只是到了现代,对文本的医学诊断才在这个意义上发生了变化。我想说明的是,这些看似无害的诊断解释变化实际上反映了疾病与神力之间关系的深刻变化。在对苏珊-桑塔格(Susan Sontag)关于阐释的著作及其与 "作为隐喻的疾病"(Ilness as Metaphor)的关系进行简要的批判性回顾之后,我将继续追溯这场灾难的复杂阐释史,然后就阐释在文学批评和医学科学中的地位提出看法。
{"title":"A Syphilis-Giving God? On the Interpretation of the Philistine’s Scourge","authors":"Matteo Bächtold","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0196","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 To understand a text, or any other form of art work, as referring to a disease is not always obvious. This uncertainty, although confined to rare cases, nevertheless allows us to explore the limits and blind spots of certain frameworks proposed to think about the relationship between art and disease, notably Susan Sontag’s book Ilness as metaphor. In this article, I take a closer look at the calamity described in chapters 5 and 6 of the first book of Samuel and its various exegeses in the Western World. This calamity (still considered by many to be a bubonic plague), was not associated with the pandemic imaginary by ancient commentators, artists, and doctors, and it is only in modern times that medical diagnoses of the text change in this sense. I propose to see that these seemingly innocuous changes in diagnostic interpretations actually reflect deep changes in the relation between illness and divine agency. After a brief critical review of Susan Sontag’s writings on interpretation and their relationship to Ilness as Metaphor, I will proceed to trace the complex interpretation history of this calamity, before drawing observations about the place of interpretation in literary criticism and in the medical sciences.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140526611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2022-0203
Rita Bueno Maia
The present article explores the way translated literature informs on (i) how exile shapes the cities’ landscapes (both the starting city and the arrival), as well as (ii) the emotional hardship of the exilic condition, which entails a feeling of estrangement and the longing for imaginary homelands. To attain this twofold aim, it focuses on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Portuguese migrant movements to Paris. It searches, on the one hand, to retrace exilience in descriptions of Lisbon and Paris in biographical accounts of Portuguese exiles. On the other hand, it analyses an 1848 rewriting of Rabelais’ Gargantua in Portuguese. It is contented that Gargantua Portuguez [Portuguese Gargantua] bears testimony of the presence of anonymous Portuguese-language exiles in mid-nineteenth-century Paris, while creating a “safe house” for them, by seeking historical justice which would, in turn, assist in coping with the exilic condition.
本文探讨了翻译文学如何提供以下方面的信息:(i) 流亡如何塑造城市景观(包括出发城市和抵达城市),以及 (ii) 流亡者的情感困境,其中包括疏离感和对想象中家园的渴望。为了实现这一双重目标,本研究侧重于十八和十九世纪葡萄牙移民巴黎的情况。一方面,它通过葡萄牙流亡者传记中对里斯本和巴黎的描述来追溯流亡生活。另一方面,它分析了 1848 年用葡萄牙语改写的拉伯雷的《加尔干图阿》。葡萄牙文《Gargantua Portuguez》见证了十九世纪中叶匿名葡萄牙语流亡者在巴黎的存在,同时也为他们创建了一个 "安全屋",通过寻求历史正义来帮助他们应对流亡状况。
{"title":"Tracing Exilience Through Literature and Translation: A Portuguese Gargantua in Paris (1848)","authors":"Rita Bueno Maia","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0203","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The present article explores the way translated literature informs on (i) how exile shapes the cities’ landscapes (both the starting city and the arrival), as well as (ii) the emotional hardship of the exilic condition, which entails a feeling of estrangement and the longing for imaginary homelands. To attain this twofold aim, it focuses on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Portuguese migrant movements to Paris. It searches, on the one hand, to retrace exilience in descriptions of Lisbon and Paris in biographical accounts of Portuguese exiles. On the other hand, it analyses an 1848 rewriting of Rabelais’ Gargantua in Portuguese. It is contented that Gargantua Portuguez [Portuguese Gargantua] bears testimony of the presence of anonymous Portuguese-language exiles in mid-nineteenth-century Paris, while creating a “safe house” for them, by seeking historical justice which would, in turn, assist in coping with the exilic condition.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140518813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2022-0165
I. Kačāne, M. Hernández-Serrano
Abstract Digital (video) calls have become a significant tool during the challenging times marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. The article focuses on the perceived functionality of video calls for maintaining social contacts and overcoming loneliness in celebrating family festivities limited by physical distance policies. The qualitative study conducted at the end of 2021 in Latvia and Spain examines families’ cultural socialisation via digital tools and, based on data obtained from semi-structured in-depth interviews, assesses the users’ digital experiences in celebrating Christmas and the New Year from retrospective and prospective standpoints. The obtained data revealed that although digital interactions were acknowledged as an alternative means for ensuring togetherness, preserving and facilitating emotional connection, and experiencing a feeling of belonging and shared identity, they were perceived as the context of exception. The findings complement existing studies that the pandemic contributed to bridging the digital gap among generations with coordinated and negotiated conceptions of the functionality of digital tools. Video calls ensured a sense of social and emotional connectedness and inspired the appearance of virtual celebration ideas.
{"title":"Social Connection when Physically Isolated: Family Experiences in Using Video Calls","authors":"I. Kačāne, M. Hernández-Serrano","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0165","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Digital (video) calls have become a significant tool during the challenging times marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. The article focuses on the perceived functionality of video calls for maintaining social contacts and overcoming loneliness in celebrating family festivities limited by physical distance policies. The qualitative study conducted at the end of 2021 in Latvia and Spain examines families’ cultural socialisation via digital tools and, based on data obtained from semi-structured in-depth interviews, assesses the users’ digital experiences in celebrating Christmas and the New Year from retrospective and prospective standpoints. The obtained data revealed that although digital interactions were acknowledged as an alternative means for ensuring togetherness, preserving and facilitating emotional connection, and experiencing a feeling of belonging and shared identity, they were perceived as the context of exception. The findings complement existing studies that the pandemic contributed to bridging the digital gap among generations with coordinated and negotiated conceptions of the functionality of digital tools. Video calls ensured a sense of social and emotional connectedness and inspired the appearance of virtual celebration ideas.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41466828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2022-0176
Jing Yang
Abstract American travel writing on China, The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, the First American Consul at Canton With a Life of the Author, not only reflects the image of China in the mid-Qing dynasty from a Western perspective, but also presents the self-conception and identity construction of early Americans. Shaw’s understanding of China prior to his arrival in China was influenced by public opinion, his community, and his reading experiences, leading him to approach his observations of China through a complex filter of romantic imagination and grandiose expectations, and commercial incentives, as well as malicious misinterpretations. While in China, his idealized vision of the Chinese market was tempered by his critical stance toward the Qing government and legal culture, which were closely linked to American interests. Shaw’s journals deconstructed the image of China as a utopia and marked an important turning point in the history of American perception of China. This study explores the trajectory of this transition and reflects on the discursive construction of American national identity in the process, tracing Samuel Shaw’s evolving perceptions of China and his influence on American politicians, businessmen, and the general public.
{"title":"The Mirror Image of Sino-Western in America’s First Work on Travel to China","authors":"Jing Yang","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0176","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract American travel writing on China, The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, the First American Consul at Canton With a Life of the Author, not only reflects the image of China in the mid-Qing dynasty from a Western perspective, but also presents the self-conception and identity construction of early Americans. Shaw’s understanding of China prior to his arrival in China was influenced by public opinion, his community, and his reading experiences, leading him to approach his observations of China through a complex filter of romantic imagination and grandiose expectations, and commercial incentives, as well as malicious misinterpretations. While in China, his idealized vision of the Chinese market was tempered by his critical stance toward the Qing government and legal culture, which were closely linked to American interests. Shaw’s journals deconstructed the image of China as a utopia and marked an important turning point in the history of American perception of China. This study explores the trajectory of this transition and reflects on the discursive construction of American national identity in the process, tracing Samuel Shaw’s evolving perceptions of China and his influence on American politicians, businessmen, and the general public.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46881769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2022-0172
Irina Grinevskaya
Abstract This essay is dedicated to the life and interests of Baron von Falz-Fein who died in 2018 at the age of 106. Having emigrated with his family in childhood, he preserved interest in his Motherland throughout his life and spent considerable time and effort to promote Russia’s ties with “White Emigrants.” He also contributed to the return of various historical documents and objects of art that had been taken abroad in the upheavals of the 1917 revolution and World War II. Throughout his life, he accumulated a substantial collection of Russian art acquired from various countries of Europe. Displayed in his house, these objects of art reflected life trajectories of émigrés, and his narratives shared with the author reveal the importance of people’s diplomacy in changing Russia’s attitudes to her diaspora. The prominent figure of the Baron, his friendships, diverse interests, and sports achievements are grandly present in the objects he possessed. His language presents considerable interest for linguists, adding to our understanding on how contact languages influence Russian spoken abroad, and which elements of the language system are robust and which are particularly vulnerable. The essay is richly illustrated with photos made by the author.
{"title":"A Russian Aristocrat in the Principality of Liechtenstein: Life Trajectories, Material Culture, and Language","authors":"Irina Grinevskaya","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0172","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0172","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay is dedicated to the life and interests of Baron von Falz-Fein who died in 2018 at the age of 106. Having emigrated with his family in childhood, he preserved interest in his Motherland throughout his life and spent considerable time and effort to promote Russia’s ties with “White Emigrants.” He also contributed to the return of various historical documents and objects of art that had been taken abroad in the upheavals of the 1917 revolution and World War II. Throughout his life, he accumulated a substantial collection of Russian art acquired from various countries of Europe. Displayed in his house, these objects of art reflected life trajectories of émigrés, and his narratives shared with the author reveal the importance of people’s diplomacy in changing Russia’s attitudes to her diaspora. The prominent figure of the Baron, his friendships, diverse interests, and sports achievements are grandly present in the objects he possessed. His language presents considerable interest for linguists, adding to our understanding on how contact languages influence Russian spoken abroad, and which elements of the language system are robust and which are particularly vulnerable. The essay is richly illustrated with photos made by the author.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42771904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2022-0189
Mareike Jenner
Abstract This article deals with issues of diversity and “visibility politics” in contemporary American middlebrow television. The focus here is specifically how the reboots of Hawaii Five-0 approach these issues. This article uses the gender swap Magnum, P.I. , where Higgins (John Hillerman/Perdita Weeks) is rendered female, as an example to explore how feminism and queer visibility are pitted against each other, while being rendered politically mute. While contemporary US middlebrow TV features a lot of racial, gender, and body and ability diversity, many of these issues are approached as visual rather than political. Drawing on different theories on representation and visibility of marginalised groups, this article argues that middlebrow TV reboots aim for a higher degree of inclusion than original series, without fully responding to the political agendas linked to equality and civil rights. Reducing political issues to questions of visibility results in a “flattening out” of goals White maintaining an ideology of “political neutrality.”
{"title":"The Case of John and Juliet: TV Reboots, Gender Swaps, and the Denial of Queer Identity","authors":"Mareike Jenner","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0189","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article deals with issues of diversity and “visibility politics” in contemporary American middlebrow television. The focus here is specifically how the reboots of Hawaii Five-0 approach these issues. This article uses the gender swap Magnum, P.I. , where Higgins (John Hillerman/Perdita Weeks) is rendered female, as an example to explore how feminism and queer visibility are pitted against each other, while being rendered politically mute. While contemporary US middlebrow TV features a lot of racial, gender, and body and ability diversity, many of these issues are approached as visual rather than political. Drawing on different theories on representation and visibility of marginalised groups, this article argues that middlebrow TV reboots aim for a higher degree of inclusion than original series, without fully responding to the political agendas linked to equality and civil rights. Reducing political issues to questions of visibility results in a “flattening out” of goals White maintaining an ideology of “political neutrality.”","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136259928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2022-0179
Shatha Jarrah, Ahmad S. Haider, S. Al-Salman
Abstract Video game localization is the process of adjusting a current video game to make it available, usable, and culturally appropriate to the target audience. This study aims to investigate the strategies that translators use in localizing PUBG and Free Fire video games into Arabic. The data were extracted from interfaces and in-game captions of the two video games. Due to space constraints, a representative subset of the collected data was then selected and analysed according to the translation strategies proposed by Díaz-Cintas, and Remael (2014). The analysis showed that the localizers have more often used transposition and literal translation strategies. They also tried to adapt the text to suit the target-language culture as much as possible. The findings of this study will be helpful to translators, localizers, and trainers. By adopting the most relevant translation strategies outlined in this article, game localizers will hopefully be better equipped with the mechanisms of video game localization. The current piece of work calls for investing more research efforts towards exploring and targeting a broader array of video game genres in Arabic.
{"title":"Strategies of Localizing Video Games into Arabic: A Case Study of PUBG and Free Fire","authors":"Shatha Jarrah, Ahmad S. Haider, S. Al-Salman","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0179","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Video game localization is the process of adjusting a current video game to make it available, usable, and culturally appropriate to the target audience. This study aims to investigate the strategies that translators use in localizing PUBG and Free Fire video games into Arabic. The data were extracted from interfaces and in-game captions of the two video games. Due to space constraints, a representative subset of the collected data was then selected and analysed according to the translation strategies proposed by Díaz-Cintas, and Remael (2014). The analysis showed that the localizers have more often used transposition and literal translation strategies. They also tried to adapt the text to suit the target-language culture as much as possible. The findings of this study will be helpful to translators, localizers, and trainers. By adopting the most relevant translation strategies outlined in this article, game localizers will hopefully be better equipped with the mechanisms of video game localization. The current piece of work calls for investing more research efforts towards exploring and targeting a broader array of video game genres in Arabic.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43650291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}