Documents found
-
301.More information
This article presents a reading of Louis-Ferdinand Céline through the concept of trolling. A relatively new phenomenon, trolling denotes an attempt to elicit a negative response in a chosen target via deliberate provocation or incitement. While inextricable from the online social media platforms that have facilitated its emergence as a discursive mode, trolling is dependent on rhetorical strategies that are hardly new: irony, self-referentiality, effrontery, aggression, etc. Trolls seek to cultivate a brand around the antipathy they delight in triggering. I contend that Céline attempted to do just this in the postwar period, and more specifically in the series of interviews he conducted at Meudon in the last decade of his life. I thus argue against some recent scholarship that claims that Céline attempted to regain, by expressing contrition, a sympathetic audience following his condemnation for having published a series of egregiously antisemitic pamphlets. Rather, I suggest that he sought to instrumentalize his notoriety for his own advantage; some readers, he likely reasoned, are drawn to him because, not in spite of, his infamy. My argument draws on a body of recent writing on the relationship between humour, new media and far-right politics.
-
304.More information
Claiming lineage with composers of the Golden Age of Hollywood and applying similar ideas regarding the place and role of music in film, John Williams is often portrayed in specialized literature as the direct heir of the pioneers of this style.While studies of John Williams' scores often focus on synchronism, it is, however, interesting to analyze the processes that create a distance between music and image. This study of Jurassic Park, a score that has yet to be subject to in-depth musicological research, explores Williams' contribution and originality vis-à-vis previous practices of contrapuntal relationships between music and film. This approach questions the dominant discourse on a contemporary composer.Indeed, a meticulous analysis of the Jurassic Park score brings to light a gap between the common opinion and the actual practice of the composer. Williams does not merely perpetuate the types of discrepancies between music and images used by the pioneers of the Classical Hollywood style, he also broadens them and re-evaluates their use. Furthermore, certain types of disassociations appear to be specific to the composer. In some scenes, Williams reinforces the discontinuity of the editing to highlight a sudden dramatic change. A distance is also created between the music on the one hand, and the dialogue, the characters' reactions and visual references on the other hand. The score departs from the “100 percent musical” style and makes important room for silence, since the music is absent during moments when the scoring is traditionally more predictable. Finally, Williams moves away from Classical Hollywood practices by addressing death in a relatively unexpected and personal way. His music moderates the perception of a happy ending by enshrouding the final shots in a sad and melancholic veil.
-
305.More information
Ki Gendeng: Sorcery and Politics. About the Occult Dimension of Public Sphere in Indonesia Romain BertrandThis article analyses the existence, in present-day Indonesia and particularly in East and Central Java, of popular modes of political reasoning, grounded in the belief that the "visible realm" of social life is duplicated by an "invisible world". With regards to the building up of political legitimacy, both at the local and national level, public mention of partnership with these secret forces can help dismiss a politician or, on the contrary, enhance his fame. The first section deals with positive political uses of the language of magies. It attempts to show that well-known Indonesian politicians make use of paranormal experts and accomplish magie rituals in order to demonstrate that they are entitled to rule. The second and third parts deal with negative or illegitimate uses of (black) magies and spiritual empowerment devices. It shows that rumours about partnership with devilish creatures can abruptly break down the career of an arrogant politician (this is the case with Ki Gendeng). Sorcery scares also have to do with the way village people re-order their world of meanings in times of turmoil, getting rid of those people (migrants, vagrants, madmen) who do not fit neatly in local social hierarchies. Only by looking at this "secret domain" are we to make sense of the outbursts of violence and protest in present-day Java.
-
306.More information
Framed within multimodality and situated in a bounded socio-geographical context (i.e., Vancouver), this ethnographic case study provides an in-depth analysis of a bilingual 8-year-old girl’s literacy practices of meaning-making established across varied semiotic modes (i.e., linguistic, visual, audio, spatial, embodied, kinesthetic) during COVID-19. The study draws upon 13 open-ended informal interviews, three sessions of imaginative play, and 16 participant-generated artifacts. The findings revealed two themes (i.e., drawing as collective meaning-making; play as embodied, anthropomorphic meaning-making) that show how the child’s interactions with humans and nonhumans (e.g., toys, objects) contributed to her multimodal meaning-making during the pandemic, which might be beneficial for children in different contexts.
Keywords: multimodality, literacy, semiotics, meaning-making, drawing and play
-
307.More information
The effeminate body and the masked death The prevailing imageries which draw femininity as the beautiful, slim, sexy or motherly woman in the fashion magazines, commercials, television series… prevent from considering jointly the deadly and the effeminate, the death and feminine, contrary to the imagery of virility. If our modern societies can offer their members a pacified and organised vision of the world to reassure them in their selfawareness, these hedonist pictures focusing on the control of the body impose, on the other hand, great sacrifices to the woman radically involved in •the process of effeminacy” of her appearances and behaviours in order to socially authenticate her gender, the adolescent girl.
-
308.More information
Taking its point of departure from Johan Huizinga's definition and Roger Caillois' taxonomy of games, this article examines the relationship between games, fiction and narrative. The ludic dimension of fiction lies in its reliance on make-believe. Conversely, games involve a fictional dimension when the playfield represents a world, and when the actions of the player, instead of being regulated by abstract and conventional rules, mimic concrete actions leading to goals of genuine human interest. Caillois believed that fiction is incompatible with rules and competition, but his pronouncement is challenged by video games, as well as by the multiple narrativized versions of the “jeu de l'oie,” a standard board game. A true reconciliation of game and fictional story will however only take place when two conditions are fulfilled: 1. players are primarily motivated by the interest taken in the story; and 2. players construct the story through their actions, and every playing of the game produces a new story.
-
310.