Digital Commons Network^™

Level Up—A Case For Female Gamers, Kuljit Brar

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

The paper addresses the notion that video games are perceived as a boys-only territory, looking into the reasons why there is a significant lack of female presence both inside games – through characters and plotlines – and outside games in the form of female gamers. The discussion examines the hazards female gamers face in attempting to enter virtual play spaces that are unwelcoming to them, and what is at stake if the video game industry continues down a male-centric path. Diagnosing the causes of these maladies, the paper focuses its attention on determining how the makers of video games can …

Contributors, Marc Ouellette, Jason Thompson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 12, issue 2 of Reconstruction.

Activism And Anagnorisis, Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

As I mull the current issue – a wonderful collection of open submissions and a terrific supplement on “post-9/11” developments, about both of which I feel too intellectually impoverished to write adequately – I am filled with mixed feelings, thoughts and even theoretical positions. This last is kind of inescapable given my best efforts to put theory into practice whenever and wherever possible. The two cannot and should not be inseparable, at least for anyone who claims to be even the most remotely involved in Cultural Studies. And yet, I know that this is the area where Cultural …

Nikita Mikhalkov’S Cinematic Verdict On Contemporary Russia, Yuliya Ladygina

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

After the bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, Putin’s administration reacted promptly to the new rhetoric in Washington and, in turn, re-branded Russia’s campaign in Chechnya as a clear-cut conflict of backward Islamic terrorists assaulting civilized Russia. As a result, the entire Chechen nation and its struggle for political independence has been systematically misrepresented and maligned in the Russian mass media, particularly in film and television. While an abundance of scholarship has examined what sorts of stories Western film and TV drama have been telling about war and terror, and what kinds of …

A Theory Of Brand Ww2, Jonathan M. Bullinger, Andrew J. Salvati

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Myths about the Second World War, grounded within stores of knowledge, often act as narrative templates to be drawn upon by collective memory. These myths and memories are transformed and commodified in a reductive manner into a brand encompassing simplistic narratives, easily recognized visual signifiers (including logo, colors, and associated symbols), and emotional cues that connect with the audience. This posits a theory that what most individuals today interact with is not a fragment of memory related to World War Two but rather a reductive representation sold as BrandWW2.

War On Terror By Other Means: The Media Industries After 9/11, Graham Barnfield, Philip Hammond

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

This Reconstruction supplement is the latest phase of a process that, formally speaking, began as the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center crept into view. One of the supplement’s editors, Phil Hammond, organized the September 2010 Screens of Terror conference at London South Bank University, to initiate a discussion of how the news and entertainment industries had responded to the crisis. Many of the conference contributions were collected in Hammond’s anthology, published on September 11, 2011.[1] Meanwhile both editors set to work on compiling a special issue of Journal of War and Culture Studies …

Talking To Yourself: Garfield Minus Garfield As An Introduction To Techno-Companionship, Andy Engel

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

A year ago while surfing the Internet, I came across a website called Garfield Minus Garfield (GMG), operated by artist/businessman Dan Walsh. Walsh received notoriety for his adaptations of the popular Garfield comic strip in which he removed its title character [1]. This act results in Garfield’s human counterpart, Jon Arbuckle, alone and talking to himself in the now empty space of the strip. A radical transformation occurs because of Garfield’s deletion that serves to emphasize the crucial role Jon and Garfield’s relationship plays in our perception of the world within the strip. Walsh begins the site with …

Contributors, Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 11, issue 4 of Reconstruction.

American Circus Re-Invented: Queering Cirque Du Soleil, Michael Johnson, Jr.

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

During Cirque Du Soleil’s twenty-six years, Cirque has challenged the traditional concept of the circus as American’s have come to understand it, by delivering entertainment and spectacle that dramatically differs from circuses like those organized by memorable pioneers P.T. Barnum & Bailey©, or Ringling Brothers© whose roots are found in the earliest history of the circus. The distinguishing hallmark of all Cirque Du Soleil performances is the notable absence of these traditional circus characteristics, supplanted with theatricality, conceptually distinct musical scores, colorful architectural backgrounds, aerial and perpendicular acrobatics, stylized choreography, puppetry and martial arts. The artistic vision promulgated …

On Getting Lost In A Good Book: Bibliomania And The Harry Potter And Twilight Series, Erin Hollis

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Beginning with the common assertion that both the Harry Potter series and the Twilight series have had a positive effect on the reading practices of children, teenagers and adults, this article examines Bibliomania in relation to the Harry Potter and Twilight series in order to interrogate the validity of such an argument. It is easy to find articles, blogs and Amazon.com book reviews that marvel at each of the series’ ability to foster a passion for reading in previously resistant readers, but such a statement erases distinctions between the effects each series has on readers and fails to examine what …

Editors’ Introduction: Gender And Popular Fiction, Cameron Leader-Picone, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

When literary critic Nina Baym wrote, in 1978, that scholars need to question the influence of gender on “the grounds upon which certain hallowed American classics have been called great,” it was a controversial assertion. [1] It still is, and no less true. In the ensuing decades, as the field of women’s studies expanded and a new level of critical attention was paid to the role of gender in popular culture, studies of popular fiction led the way. A number of our authors in this issue of Reconstruction draw upon Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance, which was …

Contributors, Cameron Leader-Picone, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 11, issue 3 of Reconstruction.

The 'Metalanguage' Of Race And The (Post) 9/11 Moment: Words Never Said, Trimiko Melancon

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Drawing upon "Mission Accomplished," a commemorative commercial, and Lupe Fiasco’s song and music video "Words I Never Said," this article examines the degree to which these particular texts serve as narratives that speak to the "metalanguage" of race and racialized enactments, especially as these relate to U.S. racial/ethnic/national identity, in (post) 9/11 cultural productions. While each of these texts toys with race, providing a context in which to interrogate (post) 9/11 sensibilities, their engagements of race and racial politics are varied. Read collectively, they illuminate the ways race, its politics, and racial representations in a (post) 9/11 moment are interpolated …

A Rare And Chilling View': Aerial Photography, Militarized Aeromobility, And Biopower In The Visual Culture Of '9/11', Caren Kaplan

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This essay inquires into the vexed matter of the visual culture of catastrophic events by situating a small group of aerial photographs of the damaged and collapsing World Trade Center Towers not only in the tradition of war reportage and photojournalism but also in the historical practices of military airpower in the expanded sense of “aeromobility.” The aerial images were taken by an amateur photographer in an NYPD aviation unit on a routine patrol on the morning of September 11, 2001 and submitted to the “9/11” Commission to be deposited, eventually, with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the …

Enduring Impact: The Crisis Fetish In Post-9/11 American Television, Christine Muller

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Commonly, those who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event – whether that event involves a near-fatal car accident or the live broadcast of the September 11, 2001 hijackings – have responded, “The world is different now. It’s like a whole new place, and things will never be the same.” These entirely disparate events provoke a similar reaction because of the nature of trauma itself. As psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman and others have argued, trauma shatters the most fundamental assumptions that govern functional daily living, leaving survivors and witnesses questioning what they really can know about and do in this world. …

The Tragic Mulatto Revisited: Post 9/11 Pakistani-American Identities In H. M. Naqvi’S Home Boy And Mohsin Hamid’S The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Bidhan Chandra Roy

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

South Asian diasporic fiction has been widely celebrated for its representation of culturally hybrid characters that challenge fixed conceptions of ethnic and racial identity. Two recent novels by Pakistani diasporic writers, however, expose the political limits of discourses of cultural hybridity following the events of 9/11. This paper explores 9/11 as a seminal event in the representation of South Asian diasporic identity in H. M. Naqvi’s Home Boy and Moshin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It proposes that following 9/11 the marginality of Pakistani diasporic identity is more profitably read in light of a precursor to the hybrid - the …

Re-Writing Ourselves In The Wake Of 9/11, Mark Noonan

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Following 9/11, V.S. Naipaul claimed that the novel's time was over, for only nonfiction "could capture the complexities of today's world." Nonetheless, a steady stream of novels began appearing seeking to frame a useful response to unimaginable terror and heartbreak including Colum McCann’s Let the World Spin, DeLillo’s Falling Man, John Updike’s Terrorist, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, Jay McInerney’s The Good Life, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad. This essay examines several of these works to discuss how …

Therapeutic Gaming And 9/11, Joyce Goggin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In 2003, a group of computer designers unveiled 9/11 Survivor, a video game MOD that they had created using the Unreal Game engine. This game, which places the player in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, boasts a story-line and gameplay that are rudimentary at best. The player’s avatar is almost invariably a businessman who is unable to find an escape route, so that the only choice players have is to perish by fire or plunge to their inevitable deaths [1].

Looking Elsewhere, Wendy Kozol

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Amid the vitriolic nationalist responses to 9/11, social critics as early as fall 2001 observed that the mainstream media’s self-absorbed focus on the attacks has served to deflect many Americans’ attention from the complex historical impact of U.S. foreign policies. Either implicitly or explicitly, these critics of 9/11 discourse have called for Americans to "look elsewhere" in order to avoid reproducing a victim narrative. If the relentless focus on 9/11 reinforces a nationalist myopia, looking elsewhere is, however, no guarantor of recognition, much less of accountability. After all, photographs of veiled women in Afghanistan readily turned women into symbols of …

Contributors, Christopher Schaberg, Kara Thompson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 11, issue 2 of Reconstruction.

9/11 Goes To The Movies: The Mythological Reverberations Of The 'Day That Changed America', Mary Bloodsworth-Lugo, Carmen Lugo-Lugo

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In this article, we pair our previous work on the discourse and ideology residing behind, and acting to construct, the "War on Terror" and "9/11"—and their attendant links to matters of race, sexuality, and citizenship within a post-September 11, 2001 United States—with an examination of Hollywood mainstream films as post-9/11 cultural products. In post-9/11 films, we find both an examination of the events of September 11, 2001 and the "American" response to those events, as well as the emergence and reinforcement of "9/11" as a culturally defined and produced lens for the "American" experience in a post-September 11, 2001 world. …

Untranslatable Realities, Eva Repouscou

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Contemporary multilingualism reflects the structure of a mutable assemblage that contains compatible and conflicting components. This paper examines the terms of translation regarding the unstable condition of social and spatial figurations. Nicolas Bourriaud’s “The Radicant” and the work of other theoreticians offer a counterpoised viewpoint for a closer examination of the efficacy of translation. In addition, an overview of certain examples of contemporary art contributes to the argument that the untranslatable is the new abstraction.

Call Center Cultures And The Transnationalization Of Affective Labor, John Muthyala

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This paper examines how the transnationalization of affective labor has become central to the Information Technology (IT) of our global world. It studies the role of American culture in call centers in India, a crucial sector of the IT industry linking the U.S. to technopolises in several countries across the world. The documentary Diverted to Delhi, which focuses on the setting up and managing of call centers, shows how a particular itinerary of culture gets deployed in order to train potential employees to learn English, become familiar with American culture, develop new professional identities by adopting Western names, and …

Review Of Translation In Global News, By Esperança Bielsa And Susan Bassnett, Kevin Howley

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

It has become commonplace for academics, news workers, politicians and pundits to lament the crisis of contemporary journalism. Buffeted by threats to advertiser-supported business models, declining audience numbers and, most damning of all, a yawning credibility gap between the public and the press, so-called legacy journalism faces enormous challenges from within and outside of the newsroom [1]. While such volatility is troubling for professional journalism, this condition has helped reinvigorate the field of journalism studies.

Contributors, Angela Flury, Hervé Regnauld

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 11, issue 1 of Reconstruction.

Contributors, Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Information about contributors to articles in volume 10, issue 4 of Reconstruction.

Irresolute Intermediaries: Television, Memory, And Weird Frontiers, David Lewkowich

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

The task of narrating our memories is a difficult and virtually impossible undertaking, especially since it is often those moments we cannot recall that, in the end, may prove be the most formative. In this paper, I look at what it means to narrativize reminiscences of the televisual viewing experience, as banal encounters that nevertheless shed light on the fragmented nature of our relations in the social world. Despite the ubiquitous presence of television in our everyday lives, its worth is rarely interrogated at the level of the writer/researcher’s subject and of memory. This piece looks not at the substance …

Evolution, Popular Culture, And The Nature Of Scientific Knowledge, James Clinton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This article presents a view of science that counters the teleological and authoritative way in which it is presented in arenas of popular discourse ranging from public schools, science magazines (such as Wired), community meetings, and popular books written by scientists. Noting the strange conflation of “evolution” (a branch of science) and “science” (as a way of thinking), the essay presents psychoanalytic and scientific arguments that suggest that evolution is equated with science in the public because evolution represents the return of the repressed element that founds any discourse which seeks to remain self contained. In science, this repressed …

Whose America Is This, Anyway?: Class, Identity, And The Critical Voice In Cultural Texts, Mike S. Dubose

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This article, by exploring an interesting and noteworthy event (a 1989 clash over identity and accusations of racism between Living Colour and Guns N’ Roses) which spanned multiple venues (from radio to magazines to the concert stage, when both bands opened up for the Rolling Stones), challenges the way scholars read and use cultural artifacts as texts, thereby creating an artificial hierarchy between "the interpreted" and those who possess "the right to interpret.

The Art Of War Reporting: Theorising Contemporary Embedded Journalism As Public Discourse, Jay Reid, Rob Cover

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

While war and conflict have always been present to some extent throughout history, since the September 11, 2001 attacks in America there has been a rise in overseas conflict and troop deployments under the banner of ‘The Global War on Terror’. For the Australian public, these conflicts take place overseas in the far reaches of the Middle East, a place to which few have first hand contact, leaving them reliant on the media establishment to inform them of events (Taylor 63). Questions however have been raised about the current forms of wartime journalism, with many in the industry …