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Semi-fiction in media

Blurring the distinction between reality and fiction in the entertainment media
Andre Krauss - United States of America It must be true; I saw it on the History Channel
College student in Arad, Romania

So, what is history? Who the fuck knows?

Oliver Stone, Esquire in November 1991

Research in evolutionary psychology shows that the earliest form of entertainment purportedly dates back to the Stone Age when people, once their survival needs were met and they had idle time, would gather around the campfire and tell stories. All activities of entertainment, starting with Pleistocene campfires, ancient partying, ancient Greek theatre, and so on, served the same function. They help individuals spend their leisure time. (Ohler and Nieding in Bryant and Vorderer, 2006: 423) Defining entertainment as an all-encompassing communicative activity in which rituals, narratives and legends are included to recount and glorify the feats of heroes, Zillman and Bryant also see this form of socialization as the result of leisure time after the immediate and elementary needs for human survival are satisfied: Entertainment is a ubiquitous phenomenon. No culture of which we have an adequate accounting has been entirely without it. As soon as the struggle for survival left human groups with sufficient time for relaxation, some form of communicative activity in which dangers and threats and their mastery and elimination were represented seems to have come into being. (Zillman and Bryant 1994: 437-438) Since those pre-historic times, entertainment has evolved and has taken on a myriad of forms and mediums from the fine arts to live performances on various stages, to radio, to the printed word, to the cinema, to television, to music and music videos and to digital interactive games. Audience behavior has also evolved from historic times throughout todays digital revolution and is concomitant with an imperative that seems to dictate the content of the entertainment medias message, and that is, its profitability. From what was once an isolated campfire story has since become well over a trillion dollar global industry where profitability seems to govern both content of the entertainment media and how it is distributed. Although each medium, over time, seems to have attracted a disparate and differentiated audience, it now would appear that todays audiences actually participate in a number of mediums on a regular basis and in some cases, even simultaneously. Bryant makes the observation that, in spite of our age having become the entertainment age, even to the point where the entertainment industry has become one of the major driving forces in the world economy, the scholars are relative newcomers to the serious investigation of entertainment and its audience. There is research in the field of psychology and communication that studies the audience reaction to the narrative stimulus and the degree of its absorption by the narrative and the audiences emotional involvement with the fictional protagonists of the narrative. Such studies have resulted in, among others, the transportation theory, and the identification of phenomena such as parasocial relationships and parasocial interactions. Inquiries into problems such as the paradox of fiction have resulted in investigations in audience identification. My focus in the present paper is, rather, more on media content than on its receivers. It is my intention to present the special effects and editorial techniques that are consistently and purposely used especially within the visual media as deliberately causing the audience to confuse reality and fiction. 5

This confusion between reality and fiction effectively blurs their distinction and thus, invests what the audience sees with more credibility than it deserves, including the not always innocuous message of the narrative. Said otherwise, do the media cheat in the basic understanding it has with its audience, by representing their subject as the truth? This form of cheating has been especially present since the invention of the photograph and later, the moving picture. The new medium of photography was heralded, since its invention, as an apparatus and a method that can render a representation of its subject as faithfully as hitherto impossible to the painter, so much as a trustworthy testimony that, in fact, it can even be used as evidence in a court of law. The publics expectations of photography were such that this new medium was invested with their trust without question. This kind of blind trust invited and continues to invite abuse. Doctored images (i.e. retouched, air- brushed and now digitally altered photographs) have been used in propaganda and, at times, even used to falsify history as well as for the magic of entertainment. While the popular saying urges us to accept that the camera does not lie, we now have to deal with seeing the image of a deceased Richard Nixon seamlessly interact with Tom Hanks on film, Steve McQueen coming back from the dead to advertise cars, and digital imageprocessing extending the image-making possibilities of photography beyond the recording of an event to its very construction. (Lister 2003:99) Of course, entertainment has always been the underlying and predominant theme of all visual representation but we have now reached a point where even the telling of the news has become entertainment. In my opinion, this can negatively affect the perception and evaluation of the message. This is especially true of young audiences who perhaps have, I believe, due to the general neglect of humanities in modern day education curricula, less of a critical ability to take in and evaluate a narrative. For the purpose of this paper, when describing the communication process that brings the entertainment message to the audience, I will rely on the elementary communication model, which is: transmitter message channel receiver and when appropriate feedback. We should keep in mind that until the digital revolution, mass media was addressing its communication largely to a passive audience, thus the communication was uni-directional. Only in political or commercial campaigns was the receiver expected to produce qualified feedback to the transmitters message in the form of a voters choice and the purchase of a product, respectively. Without detracting from the artistry and educational elements which are often present in the entertainment media, for the purpose of this paper I will proceed with the assumption that the main motivation of the entertainment media producers, i.e. the transmitter, is material gain and/or the pursuit of prestige and influence. Albeit outside of the scope of this paper, the study of advertising reveals perhaps the most overt and obvious expression of the profit motive as witnessed in commercial advertising whose stated purpose is to sell services or products and to increase profits. Suffice it to mention that advertising, especially television advertising, is presented to its audience in a manner in which the elements of entertainment are blended, often to the point of blurring, with the sales pitch. Beyond the subject of advertising, in this paper, I specifically intend to discuss the many ways in which the entertainment media, in other forms of communications, blurs the distinction between reality and fiction as well as discuss the effect this blurring may have on its audience. Also for the purpose of this paper, blurring is defined as the element in a visual communication that, directly or indirectly, leads the audience to confuse fiction and reality. It is my contention that blurring, in and of itself, can create a state of confusion which most likely will dissipate shortly after the audiences exposure to the media stimulus is over.

Agreeing with Ballard, Dery highlights the negative effect of blurring reality and fiction in addition to the constant bombardment of the senses by the media: We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind - mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising,...the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. (Dery 1999:36) Referring specifically to American or Americanized culture, he goes on to say that it is not only the chaotic sensory bombardment that will blur the distinction between what is real and what is not, but also the disorderly informational overload which no longer distinguishes what is important and what is not, between what is indecent or merely trivial, all equally competing for our attention. The media landscape we inhabit is a postmodern Coney Island where the real and the unreal, the sublime and the obscene, the horrific and the hilarious commingle freely (Dery 1999: 36) However, as a technique of visual and narrative manipulation, the blurring of violent content, in my opinion, can aggravate the effect on the audiences emotional state and even on its behavior. In fact, the confusion on a perceptive level between a fictional depiction of violence and real violence has been cited on numerous occasions as a contributing factor to or the cause of resultant violent behavior. It would not be farfetched to say that as the human child development progresses toward the point of what psychologists refer to as the fantasy-reality distinction ability, the entertainment media, from its early childhood of trick photography goes through its own development as it progresses to its contemporary sophisticated high-tech rendition of reality, but with the collateral effect of postponing the maturation of the childs perception of reality. Therefore, the important issue as far as child development is concerned is discrimination. Successful development requires an awareness of which bits are real and which bits are fantasies. (Giles, 2003:133) It would seem as if technology in this field is interfering with the natural development of the child. In the course of the paper we shall see that this is not the only way that entertainment technology and content interfere with evolutionary progression. It is important to note that there is an on-going debate among scientists, educators, psychologists and entertainment media producers as to the actual effects of violence in entertainment media among its audience. It is primarily the scientists, educators and psychologists who are advocating that violence in the media begets violent behavior in society. It is primarily the entertainment media producers who are suggesting that violence has existed in entertainment throughout the millennia and advocate that it does not influence audience behavior. Therefore, before proceeding to discuss in detail the examples of media blurring, in this paper, I will briefly review the on-going debate regarding the possible effects of violent content in the entertainment media on audiences, especially the young. Further, as it relates to the on-going debate of violent media effects on behavior, I will briefly review some of the more important problems that present day social science and media research are exploring in their studies of media effects and audience reactions. In addition, in order to see the problem in its historical dimension and because the occasional blurring of reality and fiction is, by definition, present in almost all mimetic arts, I thought it useful to have a brief reference to painting, architecture, theatre and popular entertainment in older times. This brief review will also give us the opportunity to visit some of the core problems in aesthetics and allow us to see how philosophers proposed to deal with the effects of blurring reality and fiction and its effect on the communication between the artist and his public.

I shall then show examples of blurring reality and fiction in different media but especially in the movies. The list of my examples is not exhaustive and not always chronological, but, mentioned rather to illustrate a point or to make an argument. For the purpose of showing how widespread the instances of blurring reality and fiction are, I will mention some examples of deliberate presentations of altered information and doctored photos during the course of news reporting from the field, when journalists and photojournalists are meant to be objectively documenting history. This leads to the discussion of Reality TV as a discrete media communication that is increasing in popularity and driving a pronounced evolution of content. My concluding paragraphs are directed to emphasize the importance of education and visual and media literacy so that the audience will become more conversant with the media and less vulnerable to its negative effects. This could be especially important given Americas cultural dominance and exportation of entertainment media worldwide. Finally, I will plead for the reemphasis of the study of the humanities in the educational system because it is my contention that an informed and educated audience may not only be better prepared to resist negative media effects but that it might also derive more pleasure from its interaction with entertainment. For if we were to look at blurring as a form of audience manipulation, not unlike an illusionists act that is meant to trick the audience to believe real that which is not real, this illusion would cease to work when the audience becomes aware of the magicians trick. In the same manner, media effects would possibly be less effective on an educated audience schooled in visual and media literacy. Or, to use a different metaphor: In effect, visual literacy precludes the Emperors clothes syndrome and makes of judgment a higher action than acceptance (or rejection) of a visual statement based on intuition alone. Visual literacy means increased visual intelligence. (Dondis, 1973: 185) The Debate About Media Effects Blurring the distinction between reality and fiction can become a problem when it enhances the effects of violent media and facilitates aggressive behavior from the audience, especially the young. When special effects make the action in a film so life-like, it becomes even more excitable for the audience and, perceptually, violence becomes a socially acceptable solution to any conflict. This, I believe, can add to the problem of media effects. Before continuing the discussion about blurring as a contributing factor to violent effects we should briefly look at the ongoing debate about the effects theory. Basically the critics of the effects theory claim that the media is not a hypodermic needle and that the audience is not a passive victim of media messages. In response to Karl Hovlands studies conducted in the 1940s and concluding that all forms of communication were a process by which an individual transmits stimuli to modify the behavior of other individuals Ruddock says: The hypodermic needle model suggests a very simplistic view of the mass communication process. Initial fears about media power reflected this simplicity. This was because much of this research concentrated on the concept of propaganda. (Ruddock 2001/2004:41) On the other hand, increased juvenile violence had led to the suspicion that the new medium of television was having an undesired effect on its viewers, especially the young. Legislators, civic leaders, and parents were especially worried by the rapid growth of the medium and later became concerned about its content as well. The first aspect of the problem which alarmed media critics was the media proliferation and it was later that they, as violence became a pronounced social problem, also focused on the issue of content and programming. Although early critics of television viewed the sheer quantity of media consumption and its effects on family life, such as childrens sleep patterns and their academic performance as the main problem. However, it has since been demonstrated that the 8

real problem was and continues to be the violent content to which young audiences are exposed through television. The growth of media availability naturally has led to the growth of media consumption for both adult and young audiences. In fact, by the late 1990s: the proportion of households with television would slightly outpace the population growth (Comstock and Scharrer, 1999:11). In 2005, Roberts et al. report in a survey for the Kaiser Family Foundation that American families owned at least one television set, with 75% owning three sets; 80% of the families surveyed reported having a video game console and 75% had access to the world wide web. Two thirds of children between the ages of 8 and 18 reported having a TV in their bedroom and 50% of the youth surveyed reported having a video console in their bedroom. (Kirsh, 2006) Gerbner, the originator of the Cultivation Theory, and other media critics have also drawn attention to the fact that the concentration of many media outlets in the hands of a few international conglomerates leads to a homogenization of programming content and fewer creative choices. Bagdikian, who has written about the monopolization of the media by large conglomerates and the danger this represents to media diversity and public interest programs and even information, voices the same concern with regard to media globalization. The inevitable conclusion is that children are more likely to experience the world vicariously through the media than through direct contact with the real world. In fact, surveys have shown that children spent a lot more time consuming some type of electronic media than playing outdoors. Studies have furthered shown that children start watching television from the age of one and by the age of six spend two hours watching television or videotapes each day whereas, by the age of eight they consume nearly eight hours of media on an average day. As a result, kids now spend so much time watching the television that it and by consequence, its content have practically become the other parent ultimately shaping reality, setting expectations, guiding behavior, defining self-image, dictating interests and values. A child today is born into a home in which television is on an average of over seven hours a day. For the first time in human history, most of the stories about people, life, and values are told not by parents, schools, churches, or others in the community who have something to tell but by distant corporations who have something to sell. (Gerbner, 1996:29). Aggravating the problem created by the fact that the media, in certain cases, become not only the electronic babysitter that Bettelheim warned us about, but they even become the substitute teacher. In fact, certain studies have demonstrated that people can learn false information and take it to be true when the information is embedded in the narrative of fiction. (Marsh, 2003). Nevertheless, there is still a school of thought that absolutely denies what is known as the effects theory, that being the idea that the media can have an effect on the emotions or behavior of its viewers. This denial is in spite of more than fifty years of scientific research, laboratory and field experiments, longitudinal studies and meta-analyses that have proven that a heavy diet of violent media does have a negative behavioral and emotional effect on audiences. Research on violent television and films, video games and music reveals unequivocal evidence that media violence increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior in both immediate and long-term contexts (Anderson, 2003:81) Media professor James Potter observes that in spite of many decades of on-going debates regarding the violence portrayed in the entertainment media and its effects on the audience, there has been no movement towards a solution to the problem. He identifies four groups or stakeholders that participate in the debate. First and foremost are the producers of the media who are responsible for its content. Second, and equally as important, is the viewing public which consumes the media. As the debate escalates into an issue of policy, the third and fourth groups of stakeholders are comprised of policymakers and researchers, respectively. 9

According to Potter, who refers to these four groups as four different cultures, the debate is often conducted in an adversarial manner and each group seems to be motivated by different agendas and more concerned in proving their point of view than collaborating with each other towards finding a solution to the problem. (Potter 2003). In 1969, Senator John Pastore requested the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare to appoint a committee to investigate and, hopefully, scientifically establish if television programming which contains portrayals of crime and violence has any effect on viewers, especially on children. The Pastore hearings for instance, were just such an example of mutual suspicion and a lack of cooperation. The broadcast industry was fearful that it would be made a scapegoat for all societys problems. The social scientists recruited for the project were suspicious of the broadcast industrys power to veto the appointment of scientists to the project. For example, renowned psychologist Al Bandura, whose pioneering experiments had already shown that children learn aggressive behavior by observation, was prevented by the broadcast industry from participating in the study. However, the Pastore hearings were neither the first nor the last of federal lawmakers hearings with regard to the issue of violent media effects. Potter lists a great number of hearings, investigations, pronouncements, proposed and acted regulations with a view to reduce the amount of media violence, especially on television, and to give more parental control over the kind of programming their children could access. Unfortunately, none was able to agree on the most basic of premises. There are many challenges in analyzing media content for violence. By far the most significant of those challenges is the conceptual one of defining violence. The way this concept is defined makes a huge difference in terms of how many acts of it will be found when various programs are analyzed. (Potter, 2003:258) Potter recommends a broad definition that should include almost all possible portrayals of media presented violence. Landmark hearings such as the Kefauver hearings in 1955, that were meant to determine the long- term influence of television on youth in the context of juvenile delinquency and the Dodd hearings which, also in the 1950s, investigated the relationship between televised violence and anti-social behavior of the young, led to the appointment of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence by President Johnson. All of this followed the political assassinations and national unrest of the late 1960s. The investigation, which resulted from the Pastore hearings, which lasted almost three years and cost almost two million dollars, resulted in a report known as Television and Growing Up: The Impact of Televised Violence. Writing two years after the initial Pastore hearings, Cater and Strickland concluded: Violence on the television screen, according to analysts, has continued at a high level. Violent incidents on prime time and Saturday morning programs maintain a rate of more than twice the British rate which itself is padded with American imports. It is now estimated that the HEWs profile of violence will be at least two more years in the making. The FCC has not yet dealt with the issue of violence in childrens programming. (Cater, Strickland,1974) Even though the extensive Congressional hearings that lead to the Surgeon Generals report did not lead to any significant legislation regarding the media, it nevertheless generated a good number of both laboratory and field experiments, including longitudinal studies, that laid the foundations of much of the social science research of this topic for decades to come. Based upon numerous field and laboratory experiments, social scientists have developed a number of theories that sought to explain the concrete behavioral and emotional effects that violent media content has on young viewers. One of the earliest and best known theories that explain the effects of violent media content on childrens behavior is Banduras observational or social learning theory. The theory essentially established that children observe and imitate role models in their social environment. 10

Experiments showed that children are more likely to imitate behavior, even aggressive behavior, that is either rewarded or that is unpunished. Bandura had later revised his theory to include cognitive processing variables in observational learning, thus stating that children will not only behaviorally imitate but can also learn aggressive attitudes and normative beliefs from observing a role model. (Bushman & Huesmann, 2001). This is known as the social cognitive theory. Huesmanns theory of cognitive scripting proposes that violent media content provides young viewers with scripts that encourage violent behavior. This too is a learned behavior whereby the young television viewer has encoded in memory violent behavior learned from violent programs that he later retrieves when a real situation similar to the fictional situation he viewed encourages him to behave aggressively. Zillmans excitation transfer theory is based on the presumption that TV violence has an impact because it is arousing and because this arousal dissipates slowly. It can enhance already existing negative emotions such as aggression. According to Zillman the excitement generated by a stimulating TV show can aggravate the emotions of viewers who then transfer this arousal to another event and misattribute the source of anger. Berkowitz cognitive-neo-association theory explains the way violent media can prompt aggressive behavior. According to this theory, negative thoughts or memories prime aggressive thoughts in a viewer, which, under the appropriate circumstances or environmental cue, can give justification for aggressive behavior in the same way as classical conditioning. Anderson and Bushman (2002) have developed the general aggression model that integrates these theories into a unifying framework. Two important effects of media violence researched by scientists are: habituation, a decreased level of responsiveness to media violence as a result of repeated viewing of violent media images; and desensitization a decreased level of responsiveness to real world violence as a result of repeated viewing of violent media images. An effects theory that does not stem from general behavior theories which have been applied to media violence, but which was specifically developed to examine exposure to media violence, is the cultivation theory developed by Gerbner and his colleagues. In spite of statements from media advocates that media merely reflects real life violence, Gerbner has disproven these assertions. After monitoring prime time television programs, Gerbner proved that these shows reflect ten times more crime than what occurs in real life in similar circumstances. Because the content developers tend to exaggerate events for dramatic effect, which can be overwhelming unto themselves, long- term exposure to such programs can cause the viewer to overestimate the danger of the real world and experience feelings of fear and anxiety. This is called the mean world syndrome. (Shanahan, Morgan, 1999) Donnerstein and his colleagues have identified the following four effects of exposure to media violence: The Aggressor Effect. This means that the viewer becomes more aggressive and even violent toward others; The Victim Effect. This means that the viewer becomes more fearful and suspicious of the environment than the reality warrants. Essentially this is the same as what Gerbner called the mean world syndrome; The Bystander Effect. This means that the viewer becomes so desensitized due to a heavy violent media diet that he/she becomes indifferent and unsympathetic even toward victims of real violence; The Appetite Effect. This means that the more violent media the viewer consumes, the more of this type of entertainment and more spectacular violent scenes he/she seeks.

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The research on media effects concluded quite clearly that violent media is an important contributor to aggressive behavior. Media violence is a contributor to aggressive behavior in the short run and, for children, at least, to aggressive behavior in the long run and even into adulthood. It is not the only factor accounting for individual differences in aggressiveness, nor even the most important factor. But as the mix of laboratory experiments, field experiments, cross-sectional survey studies, longitudinal survey studies, and meta-analyses show, it is a significant factor. (Huesmann 2003: 130) This conclusion is refuted by both media executives as well as by most entertainment industry representatives. In addition to those media advocates who are, in fact, members of the entertainment media themselves, the critique against the scientific aspects of the literature about media effects is based on the papers of psychologist Jonathan Freedman of the University of Toronto in Canada who mainly claims that the experiments have not demonstrated in any statistically significant way that violent media has an effect on the audience. He also claims that the controlled laboratory environment is artificial and does not properly recreate the natural environment in which audiences usually view entertainment media. For the last two decades, media effects literature (Huesmann 2003; Anderson and Bushman 2002) has debated with Freedman and has responded to most of his objections pointing out that although media violence is not the only element that causes aggressive behavior, it is certainly one of the largest contributors:

Source: Adapted, MD: Government from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2001). Youth violence: A report of the Surgeon General. Rockville Printing Office. Permission, Brad Bushman.

Even though, in epidemiological terms, the ratio of risk that violent media effects contribute to youth violence is very serious, the social scientists are very sober in their assertions. No reputable researcher of media violence has ever suggested that media violence is the only cause or even the most important cause of aggression. Serious aggressive behavior only 12

occurs when there is a convergence of factors.(Huesmann 2003:114.)

multiple predisposing and precipitating

Usually the public and the mass media show great interest and concern about media effects in the aftermath of when atrocities such as school shootings or rampage shootings are committed. This interest is however short -lived and the consumer media, over time, is rarely following with seriousness the results of the media effects research. Anderson and Bushman also refute criticism by Ferguson and Bloom and state that journalists, when writing about the harmful effects of violent media on audiences, do not seriously study the evidence presented in the scientific literature: Although we do not know what is driving news reports on media violence effects, we can say with confidence and disappointment that it is not primarily the scientific literature. (Anderson and Bushman, 2002). Furthermore, whenever media- inspired crime is publicized, the headlines highlight an obvious cause and effect relationship. This cause and effect link also usually makes a good attempt to provide rationale for legal defense. However, as social scientists have pointed out, media effects are usually not this obvious but are rather indirect, subtle and cumulative. Bushman and Anderson have compared this cumulative aspect of violent media effects to the way cigarette smoking undermines a smokers health, over time. Social scientists also prefer not to base their demonstrations on such obviously spectacular events. The rationale is partly because it is the most extreme with relation to youth violence, partly because it distracts from the larger issue of violent media effects, and partly because it lends itself to easy rebuttal by those who point to hundreds of thousands of normal audience members who watch the same films and dont come out of the theater with homicidal urges. Most people believe that even though they watch violent media neither they nor most of the people they know, act out or commit acts of violence. And, in fact, violent media effects rarely do result in real life atrocities such as school shootings. But Gentile, quoting from United States Secret Service data, shows that school shootings are merely the tip of the iceberg in youth violence and that much less severe acts of violence are actually more prevalent; for ever y occurrence of a school killing there are over 7,000 serious injuries 28,000 thefts, 44,000 physical fights and 500,000 cases of bullying. (Gentile, 2003). Furthermore, that everyone is not affected in the same way does not mean that everyone is not affected. (Gentile, 2003: 23). The television media have also come under attack from another quarter. James Hamilton, professor of economics at Duke University, compares the violent content in television with industrial pollution, in the sense that it causes a problem, in this case, a social problem, the cost of which is borne by those other than the ones who profit from this production. Economics determines the supply and demand of violent images in American television programming. The portrayal of violence is used as a competitive tool in both entertainment and news shows to attract particular viewing audiences. (Hamilton, 1998:3) Media executives are not always coy about their stated interests: As CBSs vice president for television research once told me: Im not interested in culture. Im not interested in pro-social values. I have only one interest. Thats whether people watch the program. Thats my definition of good, thats my definition of bad. (Gitlin, 2002: 204). With a circular logic, whose merit lies mostly in its attempt at juvenile humor, ABC asked in one of its seasons advertising campaign slogans: If television is bad for you, why do they have it in hospital rooms? (Gitlin, 2002). The most common arguments invoked by the media advocates, people from the entertainment industry, some mass media journalists and some media experts, revolve around the notions that: The media merely mirrors the violence that exists in society. 13

The media is showing the kind of shows that the public demands. The media is the scapegoat for other societal problems that cause violence. Violent media is beneficial because it has a cathartic effect on the viewers.

Taking his cue from Marshall McLuhans statement that every new invention in media technology is met with hostility by the establishment and is feared to be corrupting, Steven Starker reviews all forms of technological inventions in the service of mass media to show that at the beginning of their appearance, they inevitably always incited strong criticism and provoked controversies. Ignoring the subtle distinction Potter makes between violence and conflict, Shanahan reiterates that violence has always been the essential ingredient for the narrative to captivate its audience. From Homer to Hitchcock, from Shakespeare to the Shadow, from Tolstoy to Tarantino, authors have used violence as a plot device to grab the audience and keep it attentive and fascinated. (Shanahan, 1999:43) The debate regarding media effects gets lively and less restrained when it leaves the polite conventions of the academic polemics and when it involves members of the entertainment industry. Film directors such as Carpenter, whose greatest successes are horror films, believes the bloodier the better as he petulantly responded to criticism by declaring that in the future he will produce even more gore. One of the pioneers of the ultra-violent cinema, Sam Peckinpah, who claimed that his slow motion depiction of shootouts in The Wild Bunch was meant to confront movie audiences of the 1970s with the horror of the war in Vietnam, reportedly became sick by reports that Nigerian soldiers viewed his film to psyche themselves up before going into battle. (Prince, 2000) Likewise, Oliver Stone, the director of Natural Born Killers, seemed surprised that his intended ironic representation of serial killers Mickey and Mallory, and the mass media adulation surrounding them, was so badly misunderstood by audiences and his critics. In fact, Natural Born Killers had the greatest number of copycat crimes associated with a movie.i Michael Cimino was also surprised to learn that the Russian roulette scene from the film he directed, The Deer Hunter was the inspiration of a number of copycats with fatal consequences. Huesmann concludes that artists, especially successful ones, are averse to criticism that they perceive as attempts at control. One could add that artists often perceive themselves as members of the social avant-garde and are therefore justified in resisting control. Citing the work of Abelson and others, Huesmann proposes that individuals such as film director Oliver Stone, who produce violent movies, do not agree that their work could be damaging to audiences because that would be cognitively inconsistent with their behavior. Cognitive consistency is a remarkably powerful force that affects behaviors and beliefs. (Huesmann, 2003:112) In his statement before the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) president Jack Valenti spoke of a gray line extraordinarily difficult to measure, the line which separates the amount of violence which is enough to show in a movie and the amount of violence which is too much to show. Valenti goes on to recognize that while a creative artist, the filmmaker, has a responsibility to be honest in his work, he also has a responsibility towards society. It seems though that Valentis gray line is not so much difficult to measure but that it is a fairly flexible standard.

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Peckinpahs Wild Bunch, a movie that broke ground in terms of its portrayal of violence, was not just an inspired shot in the dark. In fact, while on location in Mexico, Warner Brothers sent Peckinpah a print of Arthur Penns Bonnie and Clyde to screen and to study. And, his producer, Phil Feldman urged him to view Sergio Leones recent movies for comparison to gauge what the public will tolerate. I think it might be good for you to have a comparative basis before you finally decide just how far other people have gone in the field of blood and gore and what the public is comparing us to. (Prince, 2000:13) Valenti dismisses the results of expert scientific research, pointing out that there are still disagreements not only between the scientists and the laymans point of view on the issue of the effects of media violence but also among members of the scientific community. This argument is often used during the debate when trying to discredit the findings of social psychologists. So where does one draw Jack Valentis gray line? In order to best appreciate how much Hollywood has departed from its own earlier set of standards, one should read the Uniform Production Code and compare it to some of the movies produced in todays day and age. Clearly, not all directors either recognize or lament the real life copycat violence that their fiction begets. At the presentation of their film Sin City at the 2005 Film Festival at Cannes, France, directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller defied the scientific research that proved the causal effect of violent movies and aggressive behavior. Miller, who co-directed the film with Robert Rodriguez, deflected criticism that violent films might contribute to a more violent society. He said that the bloodshed and brutality in the film noir, which is based on his graphic novels, are very "stylized". Sin City, which is almost entirely in black and white, was one of 21 films in contention for the prestigious Palme d'Or prize. Miller told a press conference: Violence is a real catchy buzzword these days. Miller then invoked Homers epic legend The Iliad by mentioning the fact that violence has been a part of storytelling since then: Considering most drama since the Iliad and before is extremely violent - because that's how people work problems out - it's a bit ridiculous. Totally dismissing the results that research by social scientists had unequivocally demonstrated, about the negative effects of violence portrayed in the media, Miller went on to say: I don't believe in the "monkey see, monkey do" theory of entertainment, the Japanese have the most violent fiction and movies in the world and they have amongst the lowest crime rate. (Caroline Briggs for BBC News, May 19, 2005) Taking the confrontational attitude toward his critics a step further, Quentin Tarantino in a recent interview proclaimed that violence is the best way for a filmmaker to control his audiences emotions, so the headline of The London Telegraph proclaimed: Extreme violence in film is the best way to control the emotions of audiences, Quentin Tarantino claimed. I feel like a conductor and the audience's feelings are my instruments. I will be like, 'Laugh, laugh, now be horrified'. When someone does that to me I've had a good time at the movies, he said. If a guy gets shot in the stomach and he's bleeding like a stuck pig then that's what I want to see not a man with a stomach ache and a little red dot on his belly. The director said that violence was the best form of cinema entertainment. In general cinema, that's the biggest attraction. I'm a big fan of action and violence in cinema, he said. That's why Thomas Edison created the motion picture camera because violence is so good. It affects audiences in a big way. You know you're watching a movie. (London Telegraph 2010). Tarantino may have been referring to the 1895 short film directed by Alfred Clark, where the decapitation of Mary Queen of Scots is depicted in one of the first shots using trick photography.

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Tarantino declared that violence belongs in action movies just as slapstick belongs in comedy, and that the only bad movie violence is the kind that is badly done. (Gitlin, 2002). The movies are at times using their medium as an inside joke vehicle to discredit the proponents of the violent media effects argument. For instance, Rockstar Games, the makers of the video game Grand Theft Auto IV named one of their cars Karen Dilletante after Karen Dill, who for years, along with Craig Anderson and colleagues, have researched the negative effects of video games. (Dill 2009:61-62.). There is a scene in the movie Lord of War (2005) directed by Andrew Niccol, where the character played by Nicholas Cage is about to close an arms deal with a warlord in an central African country when he suddenly, in cold blood, shoots one of his body guards for catching him flirt with a servant girl. To the astonished Cage he says: You know? There is no discipline with the youth today. I tried to set an example, but it is difficult, huh? Personally, I blame MTV. John Carpenter makes light of the science fiction horror genre in his 1982 movie The Thing. During one of the most frightening scenes in the film which was a special effect breakthrough at the time, was when the main character morphs into a spider-like creature with a human head and another character in the movie speaks out, as if playing directly to the audience, and says: You gotta be fucking kidding. The Historical Dimension of the debate The assertion that violence has been the main stay of entertainment throughout the ages is the argument most often invoked by those who claim that violent media have no negative impact on their audience. We have craved violent spectacle whether it was carved on cave walls, and engraved on Persian tablets enacted in Roman coliseums, or imagined in pixels on illuminated screens. (Fowles, 1999:18). Martin Scorsese, in an interview to Newsweek magazine about violence in our culture, declared that perhaps we need the cathartic effects of blood-letting as the ancient Romans needed it as long as its not real. (Bok,1992). Social scientists seem to have mostly abandoned the historical argument to their critics, either due to lack of interest or for having tired from having this argument constantly thrown at them. In my opinion, reclaiming the historical aspect of the problem of violent entertainment and its effects on spectators is important because the writings of the ancient philosophers, as well as modern scholars studying the ancient world, reflect in many ways the ethical problems inherent in the debate on the effects theory confronting social scientists today. Swedish classicist, Magnus Wistrand poses the questions that contemporary social scientists ask as well: Did the public at the arena become more violent after watching gladiatorial combats or other massacres in the arena? And, How come no one seems to have opposed these brutalities as surely they would have been opposed by some today? (Wistrand, 1992) In his study of the writers and philosophers of the first century A.D. in Rome, Magnus Wistrand explains their attitude to entertainment in general with special emphasis on the violent entertainment of the arena. Wistrand concentrates on writers of the first century A.D. and investigates the works of Juvenal, Martial, Petronius, Pliny the Younger, Seneca, Suetonius, Tacitus, Valerius Maximus and Valerius Paterculus. (Wistrand, 1992) Using philological methodology, Wistrand attempts to answer problems posed by modern social psychology regarding the effects of watching violent entertainment, studying the problem in its most controversial context, that being the watching first -hand violence live in the arena.

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Wistrand sees the Roman arena as the precursor to mass entertainment and a carrier of information and propaganda that the ruling class wanted to communicate to the people and thereby exercising social control: And in a society without mass media public entertainment gave its organizers a unique chance of informing Romans of all ranks and classes about what the organizers themselves thought of as important. It appears that especially the bloody arena shows with their hunts, historical and mythological enactments, executions and gladiatorial fights were much appreciated for their educational, or propaganda value. (Wistrand, 1992) Wistrand concludes that the question is anachronistic; first, because of the way the Roman public was conditioned to react and knew what to expect from the shows at the arena, in other words the Roman values of virtue, endurance and courage; and, second, because the writers whose testimony we study about the publics reaction to the games were themselves of the ruling class and had been thought to appreciate this type of entertainment, especially since they exhibited the same civic and martial virtues that Roman education ingrained in them. Simon Goldhill saw the bloodlust of the Roman arena as just the early manifestation of the same enjoyment of violence exhibited by people who later- on participated in public torture and executions and, by extension, the vicarious pleasure of modern viewers of more or less realistic horror shows. The question raised by the spectacle of gladiators is a question that the modern world also needs to face, and all too rarely does: what does it say about us that we like to watch such things in the name of entertainment? (Goldhill, 2004:248) Seneca, the stoic philosopher, expressed a general dislike of all entertainment, which he associated with voluptates as opposed and detrimental to the morally superior virtus. He is among the few who did specifically condemn the bloodshed in the arena, and condemned those who admired the spectacle of killing. He did write that violent entertainment rendered the spectator cruel and inhumane. Particularly interesting in the context of the mythological and historical reenactments is the interpretation of the special effects and the blur of the show with its symbolic content. It is clear that every effort was made to imbue the imaginary with the power that would make it one with reality in the minds of the spectators. (Auguet 1972:103) But as Auguet goes on saying, in a process that is the reverse of what goes on in contemporary fiction, on stage or on screen, the audience aware of the trickery of the set and the props is confronted with the reality of the story by the actual and anticipated death of the actor. They all see the ropes which help the actor reenact the flight of Deadalus across the arena but his actual fall and death in the arena is what is supposed to make the audience believe that they have witnessed the mythical event. This is what makes Martial exclaim that they have seen what so far has only been heard. After a particular allegorical reenactment of the myth of Orpheus in which the actor is devoured by a bear, after having played music to tame lions and tigers, Martial reports comparing what he had seen with how he had imagined the myth to be Nevertheless all this is as real as what has been said of Orpheus (Auguet 1972:102-3). Whereas in a reference about the myth of Pasiphae who gave birth to the Minotaur after mating with a bull, Martial says that he had seen what hitherto was only believed, and he gives Caesar thanks for making it all possible in the arena. (Wistrand, 1992) Wistrand sees here another manifestation that reinforces the idea of universal power over life and death attributed to the emperor. The fatal charades, i.e. the enactments of historical and mythological episodes, also demonstrated the power of the emperor in a manifest way: what until then had only been something people read or talked about, a res ficta (fiction), they could now see with their eyes as a res facta (fact). (Wistrand 1992:69)

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Juvenal is critical to gladiator shows and everything that surrounds them. His satires state that revenge is stupid and that even excessive punishment from the fathers will only teach the sons to be cruel in turn. Petronius also caricaturizes both the gladiator shows and their audiences in his satire Satyricon. He makes the observation that when a criminal is executed it is helpful if the public is acquainted with his story so that their emotions are engaged pro and contra. This is an idea that reoccurs in contemporary psychological research of audience reactions to violent shows. (Zillman, 2006) Not without humor, in his Ars Amatoria, Ovid gives the young Romans the ageless advice to take their sweethearts to the arena to see the gladiatorial fights. When the scenes of cruelty will make the young maidens close their eyes and put their heads on the young mans shoulder he can so much easier make his amorous advances on her. Seneca, always critical of the spectators insatiable appetite for cruelty, comments on the fact that by their constant scorn and insults thrown at the weaker combatants in the arena, they became in a way participants in the fight: from spectators became adversaries. (Auguet ,1972) Seneca, in keeping with his Stoic philosophy, writes admiringly about the slave who, when transported to the arena to be killed, takes his destiny in his own hands and takes his own life, thus preferring to bravely liberate himself from the indignities of slaughter in the arena. Suetonius in his historical biographies Vitae Caesarum described the customs of each emperor regarding entertainment. He commented negatively when some emperors manifested excessive cruelty and wrote with contempt about people in good social standing who performed in the arenas. Tacitus also scorned the different shows of the arena and did not think them dignified to be commented by serious historians. He did however criticize the exaggerated interest of the public in the shows which took away time from interest in serious pursuits. The texts studied by Wistrand and other scholars describe the reactions of the audience and the point of view of the intellectuals. There is also the testimony of many surviving mosaics and graffiti inscriptions which briefly record the events from the participants point of view mostly referring to the gladiators star status among his peers and the audience. Wistrand believes that only a change of regime, which means a change of ideology, could have brought about the cession of the bloody gladiatorial fights and public executions in the arena. That change was brought about by Christianity. However the games continued until the sixth century A.D. in spite of moral outrage by the early church fathers and according to other historians they stopped mainly because of lack of funds. (Goldhill 2004:235) It will indeed, take three hundred years, but no one describes more eloquently than Augustine who described in his Confessions the spiritual damage, the wounding of the soul a righteous man will suffer at the gladiator fights: When they arrived at the arena, the place was seething with the lust for cruelty. They found seats as best they could and Alypius shut his eyes tightly, determined to have nothing to do with these atrocities. If only he could have closed his ears as well! For an incident in the fight drew a great roar from the crowd, and this thrilled him so deeply that he could not contain his curiosity.So he opened his eyes, and his soul was stabbed with the wound more deadly than any which the gladiator, whom he was so anxious to see, has received in his body. (Bok, 1998:30) Bishop Tertullian, while also warning in virulent language and much zeal of the spiritual damage that all public spectacles caused to the faithful, theater as well as the violent gladiator fights, nevertheless promised, somewhat paradoxically, a reward of equally horror- filled spectacles for the devout Christians who abstained from such entertainment while on earth, as they will be watching for all eternity the suffering of the damned on Judgment Day. (Bok, 1998)

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Blurring of Reality and Fiction We find the earliest example of the artist trying to capture reality in such a perfect way that his two- dimensional representation is mistaken for the three- dimensional reality both by humans and by animals described by Pliny. He speaks of the competition by the painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius in which the challenge is the creation of complete illusion of reality and the virtuosity of the artist is measured by the degree to which he managed to fool his audience. The anecdote describes how sparrows came to pick at the grapes painted by Zeuxis.ii Generally, however, philosophers and critics of art disdained such illusionistic effects both in the ancient world and later on. Gombrich quotes Goethes On Truth and Verisimilitude in Works of Art where Goethe refers to art that aims at deceiving the eye as sparrow aesthetics. It is also in ancient Greece that we find the first warning not to fall prey to this kind of illusionistic art. In book seven of Platos Republic, in his famous parable of the cave, Plato describes a group of people who live in a cave and are chained in a way so that they can only face the wall opposite them. This acts as a screen upon which the reflection of their shadows, and the shadows of other figures and objects in the background, are reflected by a source of light which is a fire positioned behind them. In answer to Socrates description, Glaucon responds: To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadow of images. (Plato, 1942) Some philosophers interpret Platos aversion to artists interested in the impressionistic appearance of things instead of their essential truth as criticism targeted against painters such as Zeuxis, Parrhasius and Apollodorus who were actually called shadow painters. (Gilbert, 1939). Their art was referred to as skiagraphia and when applied in theatrical stage design, it was called skenographia. (Tatarkiewitcz 1970). Greek aesthetic practices were not always involved with creating visual illusions, but often with correcting them, thus compensating for conditions of faulty perception in the physical construction of their art. Empirically, they found out that often it is not the artist that needs to fool the observers eye, but that the eye often fools the observers brain. This intuitive compensation for optical distortions were observed mostly in ancient Greek architecture and analyzed by 19th Century scholars. For example the inner columns of the Greek temples, being in the shade, had smaller diameters so as to appear equal to the outer ones. To compensate for their smaller diameter they had a greater number of grooves in them. They also tilted the outer columns toward the center so as to counter-balance optical deformations. (Tatarkiewicz,1970). And in fact, where the movies are concerned, our physiology collaborates in the creation of the illusion. A moving picture or motion picture is just a series of still pictures which, when projected at a certain speed or frames per second (FPS), create the illusion of continuity because the visual cortex retains each image for a fraction of a second, while the other image is projected, thus the illusion of movement. It would take the convincing power and enormous reach of mass media to fool not one person or a few sparrows but to create mass hysteria among millions of inhabitants of the most technologically advanced country in the world, the United States. The invention of the photograph and the moving pictures, the radio and other means of mass communication, along with the social structure of the modern industrialized world, have given the possibility for the transmitter to manipulate their message in a way that could also cause the blurring of reality with fiction at the receivers end.

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War of the Worlds, 1938 CBS Radio play On the 30th of October, 1938 Orson Welles directed and narrated a broadcast of a science fiction radio play based on H.G. Wellss 1898 novel War of the Worlds. The CBS radio program caused great anxiety among its listeners in New Jersey, where the aliens were supposed to have landed, and beyond, including the American northwest where people were reported to have fled their homes in panic. How did a radio play broadcast on the eve of Halloween manage to trick people into believing that their country was being invaded by aliens? All of this, in spite of the disclaimers at the end of the program, in spite of the narrators announcement at the beginning of the show that the events were taking place in the future, a year later, in 1939, and in spite of the fact that the events were based on a well -read and popular novel. Remarkably, later interviews revealed that some of the more sophisticated listeners were not so nave as to think that America was invaded by Martians, but rather, they were convinced that it was really a German or Japanese invasion with the foreign soldiers disguised as Martians. In fact, reportedly, millions of people were frightened and thought that the broadcast was reporting actual events. Subsequent to this event a study was conducted by Hadley Cantril called The Invasion from Mars: a Study in the Psychology of Panic (1940) which used both standardized quantitative surveys and also a number of qualitative open-ended interviews that explored the listeners reactions to the broadcast. All of the respondents indicated that listening to the broadcast produced fear because they thought that it was broadcasting a true event, a true invasion. The interviews with listeners who were affected by the broadcast showed that the most important factor that contributed to their perception that the show was real was the fact that it was broadcast without commercial interruptions and the fact that it was transmitted in the form of an on-site journalistic report. In fact, the producers of the radio play did indeed use a news -reporting style to format the information in order to mimic a real life newscast and thus credibly enhancing the shows sense of reality. Likewise, the public was taken in by the radio plays interviews with experts, men of supposed authority in the field of astronomy and defense as well as such authority figures and opinion leaders as police chiefs, high ranking military and politicians, all of whom ended up being actors and not real professionals. These so-called experts professional position and social status inspired confidence and lent credibility to the message. In addition, middle class college graduates also stated that they were confident that government authorities would not deceive 20

them and that they would not use the medium of radio to broadcast news unless they were factual. Cantril checked the records of the American Telephone Company (ATC) that showed the massive numbers of calls to police and radio stations during the broadcast. Radio station managers also reported that they got a lot of correspondence regarding the broadcast. According to a poll by The American Institute of Public Opinion it was estimated that 6 million people had listened to Wells broadcast of which 1.2 million had admitted to being scared. All of this leads to the conclusion that the broadcast of the radio play War of the Worlds had significant impact on its audience. This event in fact generated one of the earliest studies that concluded that the media does indeed have an effect on the audience. Similar factual presentation, press reporting and suspension of commercial breaks were used in the 1983 ABCs television film The Day After with astonishingly similar results. Many viewers had to receive counseling after seeing the film and surveys completed by parents showed that young viewers showed symptoms of unease during the viewing of the film and were disturbed in their sleep. The ensuing research also showed that teenage viewers were more frightened than younger children: The researchers explained this as reflecting the fact that only older children were able to differentiate between this and other horror/science fiction programs in recognizing the plausibility of the scenario. (Ruddock 2001/2004: 67) Actually, one of the consequences of the public panic caused by the radio play War of the Worlds and in recognition of the power of the broadcast media, reporters had to undertake self restraint and to promise to exercise good judgment during the war in order to be allowed to report from the field. In a way, War of the Worlds became the standard both for the army brass who wanted to avoid discouraging the home front and for the reporting journalists. For example, when Ed Morrow reported from the rooftops of London during the bombing and compared what he saw with War of the Worlds. (Bianculli 1992). It seems that realistic depictions of post -apocalyptic nuclear catastrophes resonate strongly with audiences, especially when they are using the reportage documentary style and when the mediation of the journalist makes the action more credible.iii British filmmaker Peter Watkins documentary style drama War Game, describing the aftermath of a nuclear attack on England, was forbidden to be shown on television with the BBC management explaining their decision to withdraw the film claiming fear of distressing the audience. However, blurring reality with fiction by editorial means in the entertainment media does not only result in mass panic. It can also affect the publics level of expectation and sometimes even their perception of reality. This was the case in the much -publicized 2011 trial in Florida of Casey Anthony who was acquitted of murdering her infant daughter due to lack of proof. Apparently, the jurys expectations of proof beyond a reasonable doubt were not satisfied because their expectations had been conditioned by television shows such as CSI. According to legal experts and commentators, the prosecutions case should not have been held to such standards. This is now called the CSI effect. A different instance of blurring between reality and fiction in media entertainment is the depiction of torture. Torture is realistically portrayed in such graphic realism in TV shows such as 24, when government agents like Jack Bower, played by Keifer Sutherland, have to use any means at their disposal to diffuse the so-called ticking bomb, including methods of torture. Reportedly, Pentagon officials had to go to the producers of the show 24 and ask them to tone- down the realism in the torture scenes because many of the solders and operatives in the field took their cue from the show reasoning that if Jack Bower does it, then it is okay to torture. In reviewing this situation more closely, it would appear that the rationale for depicting torture in the TV series was that the hero, Jack Bauer gets results with his methods because not 21

only do they work but because they are also expedient. This was the opinion of Supreme Court Justice of the United States, Anthony Scalia, when, during an interview, he declared that no jury in an American court of law would convict Jack Bauer for his patriotic actions. Not only was this a clear and intentional blurring between reality and fiction, but, in a number of instances where the justification of physical torture was discussed by other eminent and high profile US government officials such as former President Bill Clinton, when he responded to a journalists question regarding the proverbial ticking bomb dilemma, he too deferred to Jack Bauer as if he were a person existing in real life. One could view this as a potentially convenient way to personify the problem with a fictional character rather than discussing the problem in real terms and involving real protagonists from existing US Security agencies.iv It must be said, however, that not all blurring of reality and fiction is the result of preconceived manipulation and, in some cases its results can be quite comical or slightly embarrassing. The blurring of reality and fiction may in some cases be the result of information overload, so typical of the digital age. In early 2012, at an international shooting competition in Kuwait, the gold medalist from Kazakhstan, Maria Dimitrienko took the podium to receive her prize. As she watched the flag of Kazakhstan being raised on the pole, she and her countrys delegates were shocked and dismayed when instead of hearing the real national anthem, the music that was played was the satirical off-color version of the Kazakhstan anthem from Sasha Baron-Cohens film Borat. The event arrangers explained that the music was downloaded from You-tube when they searched for the national anthem of Kazakhstan. Blurring reality and fiction can sometimes even confuse actors who are clearly used to playing different roles and characters and who are certainly familiar with cinematic special effects. The actor-producer-former rock star Mark Wahlberg, for instance, who had been scheduled to be a passenger on the doomed flight United 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pa. on 9/11 was quoted as saying to a Mens Journal that had he been on the hijacked airplane Unit ed 93, on 9/11, he would have ended up killing all of the hijackers and saving the plane and the passengers: If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn't have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, 'OK, we're going to land somewhere safely, don't worry.v Suzanne Collins, author of the bestselling books Hunger Games and producer of the block-buster movie of the same name, refers to an uneasy state of blurring as the cause of her inspiration. She describes a situation where she was flicking TV channels between a station showing documentary pictures from the war in Iraq and another station showing a TV game. She was thus inspired to write her books of fiction depicting a futuristic dystopia in which teenage contestants, some volunteers, from poorer regions of a confederation, participate in gladiatorial fights sine misione, to the death, telecast for the amusement of decadent spectators from the richer districts of the confederation. Not unlike other films with similar storylines, such as Peter Watkins 1969 Gladiators, and Norman Jewisons Rollerball, (1975) this form of channeling violence and vicarious pleasure from watching it is thought to substitute for international armed conflicts and ensure peace among nations. Needless to say, this kind of mass catharsis does not work in the movies and, according to social scientists, it certainly does not work in real life. An example where the blurring of reality and fiction was clearly the intention and primary purpose of the film was The Blair Witch Project, (1999). The directors of the film used hand-held cameras and other cinema verit techniques to increase the perceived authenticity of the story. However, during the film, there is no significant action and at the end of the film, no climactic or scary ending is revealed.

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By replicating the aesthetic style of cinema-verit which is a common mode of documentary films, the Blair Witch Project blurred the line between fact and fiction (Yates, 2012) The novelty that accounted for the financial success of this low budget film was mostly its guerilla- style multi-media viral marketing strategy, which was revolutionary at the time. The marketing communications had intentionally amplified the blurring in order to increase the audiences curiosity. Directors Myrick and Sanchez had established an official website for The Blair Witch Project a year before its release and posted updates, diary excerpts, family statements, witness interviews and official-looking documentation of missing persons to create this false myth. The directors usage of the internet as a rumor mill accounts for much of the films success. In fact, the films website had millions of hits before the film was released and chat sites picked up the story further adding to the ambiguity. Not surprisingly, after the successful run of their film, the directors, rather than continue in the film industry, set up a marketing firm called Campfire where they continued to successfully exploit their story telling technique for commercial clients. However, blurring the demarcation between reality and fiction can also be viewed as a convention of storytelling and, to some extent, can reflect the success of the narrative. Woody Allen in movies such as The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) deliberately uses the blurring of reality and fiction to show the magic of the movies and the multi levels of reality to which they allows its spectators to escape. In this case, we witness the escape of a diner waitress from harsh everyday life during the depression era into the glitter and glamour of tinsel town, Hollywood, with its fairy tale allure of care free luxury and opulence, and of course, prince charming. In Allens world, this Cinderella does not even need to dress for the ball, all she needs is a ticket to the cinema. It is clear that Woody Allen, in his way of blurring reality and fiction for his audience, enlists not only the imagination of his protagonists, like in The Purple Rose of Cairo and later in Midnight in Paris, but also the imagination of the cinema audience as well. Mel Brooks, used blurring reality and fiction in a very different way, producing a very different perception. In so many of his films, Brooks allowed reality to break- in on the narrative like a practical joke or prank, bursting the bubble on the illusion of the movie. His scene in Blazing Saddles ((1974) where the entire Count Basie orchestra is playing in the middle of a desert, tux and all, while the sheriff rides in on his horse, is an example of just such a ploy. In his film Wings of Desire (1987), Wim Wenders, in his endeavor to insert a real world witness to his story, intentionally cast the actor Peter Falk because of his international fame and instant recognizability as Columbo. The films story line tells the story of two angels who come to earth, one of whom wants to renounce his angel status and desires, rather, to become a human being, a mortal able to experience emotions, even pain and sadness, and to be able to fall in love. The angel, Damiel, encounters Peter Falk, playing himself, as the actor Falk, cast in a movie being filmed in Berlin, and tells him about his metamorphosis. In the ensuing dialog, Peter Falk alludes to the fact that he too had been an angel in the past that had chosen life on earth as a human being. This surreal assertion is made known to the angel Damiel and to the public in the most pedestrian exchange between the two when they discuss how much money each had received from an antique dealer for their angel wings. Angels among humans, Wim Wenders alluding to this ambiguity, leaving the question without a concrete answer but by portraying Peter Falk in the role of the former old angel lends a suggestion of credibility to th e story. In his analysis of the film, Richard Raskin, the documentary -style introduction of the real Peter Falk in the fiction narrative fulfills its intended function because: he (Falk) enjoys our confidence because we know him as Columbo and as the actor, Peter Falk (Raskin 1995)

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Raskin further suggests that the miraculous feeling implied by Falks revelation extends the illusion to the audience viewing the film: This revelation - which comes progressively as the lines are exchanged, and Damiel's growing perplexity finally gives way to his (and our) catching on - not only explains why Peter Falk could sense Damiel's presence in the earlier Imbiss scene; it also confirms that we and Damiel were right to trust Falk's judgment, and that Damiel will never regret becoming a mortal, since Falk - thirty years after his own transformation - radiates fulfillment and wellbeing. Furthermore, Falk's "there's lots of us" helps to generalize Damiel's choice to such a degree that the viewer can play at imagining not only that Falk really is a former angel but also that the "us" might include people sitting in the movie theater, even oneself. (Raskin, 1995) Wings of Desire belongs to the genre called magical realism which perhaps implies that a certain blurring of reality and fiction is to be expected but, in the confines of the narrative, is innocuous and pleasant, with the enchanting qualities of a fairy tale. Such ingenious reference to a real witness that lends credibility to the fictional narrative will deliberately enhance the blurring effect for the audience. There has been speculation about Alfred Hitchcocks propensity for making short silent cameo appearances in almost all of his films. These particular appearances can be interpreted as no more than Hitchcocks signature on his creations, like any great artist would sign his work. What I would suggest is that by appearing in each of his films, Hitchcock thus establishes himself as the ultimate eye-witness to the action, lending credibility to his narrative thereby blurring the distinction between reality and fiction. So, while the audience recognizes Hitchcock as a real person in his films, his presence, in turn, seems to say to the audience believe me, I know, I was there. In tracing the blurring of reality and fiction in film, one should also consider the total marketing communications package promoting the film, such as the advertising, publicity junkets and public relations. These communications, which often times capitalize on credible authoritative and also anecdotal evidence, can individually, or combined, help to reinforce the transmitters message to the receiver. For example, such is the case of Oliver Stones film Platoon, about the war in Vietnam. The fact that director Oliver Stone had himself served active duty in the war in Vietnam, had been repeatedly invoked in the marketing communications as a testimony to the veracity of the film, to the extent that the film was critically praised for its realism. Oliver Stones JFK (1991) was heavily criticized because of its casual approach to history and in some ways for mixing documented reality with speculation. Stone was criticized by journalists, historians, politicians, and political pundits for his treatment of the events surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In part, this was a result of the content of his film. He was accused, among other things, of fostering paranoia by suggesting that President Kennedys assassination was a result of a conspiracy involving highly placed persons in the United States government. But also and for some critics even more seriously Stones film seemed to blur the distinction between fact and fiction by treating a historical event as if there were no limits to what could legitimately be said about it, thereby bringing under question the very principal of objectivity as the basis for which one might discriminate between truth on the one side and myth, ideology, illusion, and lie on the other. (Hayden in Sobchack 1996:19) Some critics found this irresponsible especially since Stone has declared that he made this film with thoughts for Americas youth and their relation to such crucial events in the history of their country by dedicating this film to them. Film critic David Armstrong says: I am troubled by Stones mix n match of recreated scenes and archival footage because young viewers to whom (Stone) dedicates this film could take his far reaching conjectures as literal truths. Post-modernist historian Hayden goes on to explain Armstrong comments as follows:

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Armstrong suggests, in a word, that Stones editing techniques might destroy the capacity of young viewers to distinguish between a real and a merely imaginary event. All of the events depicted in the film whether attested by historical evidence, based on conjuncture or simply made up in order to help the plot a long or to lend credence to Stones paranoid fantasies are presented as if they were equally historical, which is to say, equally real, or as if they had really happened . (Hayden inSobchack1996:20) The above substantiates my concern for young audiences who lack, especially due to the general neglect of the subject of humanities, the critical ability to take in a narrative and evaluate its historical veracity, its moral and philosophical standing and verified against older knowledge. Even considering the post-modernist insistence on subjectivity of interpretation, I am not talking about an audience that has to consider different points of view but about audiences who have neither a point of view nor points of reference. This is the public that is ripe for manipulation and ripe for being taken in by any conspiracy theory. This is the public for whom the history presented by Hollywood and the video game producers is the new history, the new mythologies. There would be nothing wrong with a student saying I saw this on the history channel and I wonder if it is true? But there is everything wrong with my former student in Arad who told me This must be true because I saw it on the History channel. Education is a powerful tool but so is lack of education, because it can allow for easy indoctrination. There are movies whose story line and message seem to actually warn us about the power of the entertainment media to manipulate reality and audience perceptions to the point of being damaging and even at times risk being the breeding ground for conspiracy theories. Capricorn One (1978) speaks of a planned space mission to Mars, which for some reason is never launched, but the government agency in charge does not want to acknowledge its responsibility and arrange for the space mission to be staged in a film studio and presented to the world as real events. Wag the Dog (1997) is yet another example of a film that deals with a government hoax perpetrated on the people. Today we may not even need to stretch our imagination to believe that a casus belli and the ensuing war can be custom made in television studios, and believed by all, just for a president whose popularity needs a boost.

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Two films that best illustrate our relationship with the television medium and its possible impact on are Sidney Lumets (1976) Network and Hal Ashbys Being There (1979).

Two movies that best illustrate the publics relationship with the television media are Hal Ashbys 1979 Being There, and Sidney Lumets Network (1976). Being There, which was based on a novel by Jerzy Kosinsky, is a satire which suggests that in the information age society so totally dependent on mass media, that even a simpleton,whose entire universe of knowledge stems from television, can be taken for a sage. The platitudes he utters can be interpreted as wise metaphors and loaded with importance. So what if at the end of the movie he walks on water? Network is one of the films that most strongly condemned television and its power over the audience. Written by Paddy Chayefsky, it was inspired by a true event. In 1974, Christine Chubbuck, a reporter at a Florida- based television station had actually shot herself in front of TV cameras after her program had been cancelled and taken off the air because, apparently, it did not contain enough violent content. Chayefsky took this extraordinary event and made it the central theme of his script about a veteran broadcaster, Howard Beale, who threatens to kill himself during a live broadcast because he is about to be fired. Both Chayefsky and Lumet, in Network voice some scathing criticism against the mercenary way television manipulates its audience: Howard Beale, the veteran broadcaster: Because you people, and sixty-two million other Americans, are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books! Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers! Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube. Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube! This tube is the Gospel, the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers... Diana Christensen, the heartless TV executive in the movie in a lucid analysis describes the vicarious role television plays in channeling the fury of the TV audience and their helpless frustration with every day realities of life: The American people are turning sullen. They've been clobbered on all sides by Vietnam, Watergate, the inflation, the depression; they've turned off, shot up, and they've fucked themselves limp, and nothing helps. Blurring in Journalism Even in realistic representations of his surrounding world, the artist had always had a choice to imitate what he sees, to idealize and try to improve on reality or to caricaturize and highlight the defects of the world. The audience of the artist had a choice of accepting the artists vision or to reject it. Once the photograph was invented the publics expectations of this new technology were that representations captured by a photograph will always be true to its subject and popular sayings reflect the core of this trust: I believe it when I see it; a photo does not lie; and, a picture is worth a thousand words. Investing a method, an instrument, a concept with so much confidence and trust inevitably invites deception. The practitioners relied on their ingenuity as well as the publics trust to alter the expected truth. Haskel Wexlers movie Medium Cool (1969) which is a blend of cinema verite, documentary and fiction, looks at the moral dilemma of the reporter. When reporting a disaster or human catastrophe what is the duty of the reporter to report or to help the victims or people involved in the emergency? Perhaps the best time to examine the performance and the moral dilemmas facing reporters and photojournalists is in time of national crisis. In many situations the reporter is caught between conflicting interests and conflicting feelings i.e. his loyalty to his country, which, sometimes, conflicts with his professional duty to inform the public. 26

In some of the earliest war reporting, Irish journalist William Howard Russell, while reporting from the Crimean War, had found himself on the wrong side of the military brass when he sent his reports about the incompetence of the campaign leadership and the unnecessary suffering that it caused to the common soldier in the field whose basic needs were unmet due to shortages in supplies.

One of the best known images of WWII is in fact a dramatic restaging of the event after the original photograph was taken.

From the beginning of war reporting, the competition between reporters was great and the public was not very discerning regarding the truthfulness of the reports. British war correspondent Frederick Villiers had captured battlefield action for the first time on motion picture film in the Greco-Turkish war 1887. Battle of Volo in Thessaly, Greece could not sell what he thought was a photo journalistic coup because a film studio in Paris had already shown dramatized reconstructions of the battle. So the public was not particular in the truthfulness of the films they were seeing. Newspapers during the American Civil War were so eager to publish fresh news that they were not very fussy about the veracity of the stories their reporters sent. telegraph fully all news you can get one Chicago Times editor wired a war correspondent and when there is no news send rumors (Rohdes, 2006 :205) Mexican general Pancho Villa, in 1914, signed a contract with the Mutual Film Corporation giving the rights to all battle coverage, even promising to fight during the day so that cameras could capture the action. At the attack on the city of Ojinaga, Villa waited for the cameramen to arrive. American Civil War photographers took poetic license and the armies collaborated in rearranging and restaging for dramatic pictures. This kind of restaging for the camera was later repeated when the Soviet Army published photos of its soldiers raising the red flag on top of the Reichstag in vanquished Berlin; just as American marines restaged the iconic picture of the raising of their flag atop mountain Suribachi in Iwo Jima. Euphoric embers of the Egyptian army restaged their crossing of the Suez Canal for the world press to record their first victory in battle against Israel. 27

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), where all political ideologists from the extreme left to the extreme right clashed, representatives of the international news media were usually writing stories that were conform with their own individual ideologies. However, in both World Wars, journalists were generally in lock-step with the government interests. During World War I, in an effort to dehumanize the enemy and fuel the soldiers hatred against him, the media became complicit with the government propaganda and disinformation efforts by publishing rumors of inhuman atrocities committed by the Germans including desecration of churches, rape, infanticide and even cannibalism.vi A mere two decades later, it was the turn of the German state propaganda machine to spread similar falsehoods about behavior of the allied armies. The inherent danger in this type of propaganda which deliberately blurs fact and fiction is clarified by the art historian Sir Ernst Gombrich who during the war was monitoring German state media for British intelligence: For this, in a way, is the final horror of the myth. It becomes self-confirming. Once you are entrapped in this illusionary universe it will become reality, for if you fight everybody, everybody will fight you, and the less mercy you show, the more you commit your side to a fight to the finish. (Gombrich 1979: 108-109). In World War II, the allied press corps manifested its loyalty to the just wars their governments were waging, mostly by closing ranks with the military and respecting their needs for secrecy, reporting only what was deemed not damaging to the allied forces and thereby avoided giving crucial information to the enemy. Unlike during World War I however, they did not report any false information or indulge in propaganda. The Vietnam conflict, however, was a different kind of war, especially in its later years when a great part of the U.S. civilian population no longer supported the war when news of atrocities committed by U.S. troops reached the homeland. For the young war reporters, their eagerness to be on the frontline, in addition to the professional principal that the public has the right to know , was also fueled by their personal curiosity and spirit of adventure. Many young journalists flocked to Vietnam to make their fame and fortune and also to satisfy their youthful craving to prove their machismo: The fascination for violence and death, along with the struggle the more sensitive correspondents had in trying to reconcile their hatred of war with their very real enjoyment of it, puzzled and annoyed some observers. It is impossible to realize how much of Ernest Hemingway still lives in the hearts of men until you spend time with the professional war correspondents, wrote Nora Ephron in New York Magazine. Most of the Americans are stuck in the Hemingway gab and they tend to romanticize war, just as he did. Which is not surprising: unlike fighting in the war itself, unlike big-game hunting, working as a war correspondent is almost the only classic male endeavor left that provides physical danger and personal risk without public disapproval and the awful truth is that for correspondents, war is not hell. It is fun. ( Knightley, 1975) Hollywoods depictions of Americans fighting in World War II and in Korea were the only points of reference for the young soldiers fighting in Vietnam and as such, they tended to relate their experiences to war as it had been depicted in Hollywood fiction. Michael Herr describes the increased activity and shouting of the troops while they were filmed by a television crew: They were actually making war movies in their heads, doing little guts and glory Leatherneck tap dances under fire getting their pimples shot off for the networks. (Knightley, 1975). Journalists report that many of the American GIs were shooting down Vietnamese, often civilians, thinking that they were acting like in the movies: Holy Jesus! You see that? Just like the movies. The guy sagged, then just kinda slowly slid down holding on to the doorway, wrote Ian Adams in Macleans Magazine in February, 1968. (Knightly, 1975) 28

It seems that for these soldiers, the movies were more real than the reality they were actually experiencing. The public uproar in America, fueled by the media, about the supposition that suspected terrorists after 9/11 were being tortured; especially using the method of water boarding seems strange in view of the fact that the public was informed of incidents of water torture in the Vietnam War which were already published in the U.S. in Newsweek magazine in 1967. Peter Arnett, who worked as a correspondent for the Associated Press during the Vietnam War era had said that even if he had witnessed a war crime, he would not write about it describing it as a war crime because of the reporters credo that his duty was to report and not to judge. To a large extent, the military and the government blamed the media for turning public opinion in America against the war in Vietnam, yet the media, in addition to reporting, claimed that realistic representations of combat were what the public wanted. This was not a new phenomenon. The medias conviction that the public demands violence is reflected in the coined expression if it bleeds, it leads. Herb Greer, of NBC television, recounts that during the war in Algeria, he was specially paid to film detailed and gory battle scenes. Knightley quotes American psychologist Frederick Wertham saying that television was conditioning its audience to accept the horrors of war. The only way we can possibly tolerate it (war) is by turning off part of ourselves instead of the television set. (Knightley, 1975) Inquiries conducted by the press at the time showed that the American public was developing a tolerance for horror. Reality TV Given Americas perceived role of leadership in the world and given its domination by sheer quantity of the entertainment media, TV, cinema, videogames, music and even commercials, America becomes for many, especially among the young audiences, the uncontested opinion leader in matters of culture, fashion, and social standards. These opinions and images are further reinforced by fashion and entertainment magazines and popularized portrayals of the lifestyle of entertainment celebrities, especially since America has also managed to export its national awe and fascination with star celebrities. It is for this reason that the prominence and dominance of Reality TV, as it is known, where fiction has morphed into a new reality that we find one of the most interesting manifestations of blurring of reality and fiction. How else could one describe the transition from the televised live courtroom proceedings of the O.J. Simpson murder trial in the early 1990s, which Kubiack describes as a media circus, in which even members of the jury became celebrities, to the airing of todays supposed real life dramas? During those tense days the public were all riveted to the television as they witnessed Simpsons elite team of lawyers, including Robert Kardashian successfully defend their client to achieve a not-guilty verdict. Today the public is now all riveted to the television as they witness the unprecedented success of Robert Kardashians off-spring, in particular the vivacious, curvaceous and newly proclaimed global sex symbol Kim Kardashian during the now internationally televised at- home real-life drama of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. In fact, reality TV which originally consisted of game shows during daytime has now become a discrete media communication in primetime that is increasing in popularity around the globe and driving a significant trend towards an increase in cost efficient programming and one that has demonstrated a pronounced evolution of content. So omnipresent is the influence of American Reality TV that some shows, even though conceptually originated in other countries (like Survivor which originated in Sweden as Expedition Robinson or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or The Weakest Link which originated in

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England or Big Brother which was a creation of Holland), only gained worldwide popularity when they were launched from the United States. And, it would appear that the popularity and credibility of Reality TV is forever cemented in entertainment by having become institutionalized as a part of real life in films such as Slum Dog Millionaire where the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was a featured thread throughout the entire film, where, Richard Dawson, the TV show host from Family Feud lends credibility and authenticity as a game show host in the film Running Man and where The Hunger Games was ultimately constructed as a live competitive game show for the viewing pleasure of the elite in a futuristic society. The advent of upgraded and enhanced daytime reality show concepts started in 1988 during a screenwriters strike. At the time, executives and producers were looking for material and content to backfill the shows that were on strike. They were so successful and so economical to produce, that the format was adapted for prime time and replaced many of the show formats that had preceded them. Reality-based television has been remarkably successful in audience ratings and in syndicationIndustry personal considers these programs to have emerged from documentary practice and to have taken off during the six months writers strike in 1988 when the networks turned to them in order to fill airtime. (Steiger in Sobchack 1996:43) Further, it is said that Reality TV shows make sense from an economic perspective because they carry a moderate price tag compared to drama and even news and current affairs, because the actors are initially paid so little. Some claim that the real origin of Reality TV is in the accounting department who plans to minimize cost and maximize the audience.its all to do with the cost of producing and obtaining the highest ratings possible. Even though they are presented as real time spontaneous and realistic free flowing broadcasts, it is a fact that almost all Reality TV shows are scripted and carefully edited before airing so as to fascinate and to have maximum appeal to its intended audience. This is perhaps the explanation for the fact that in addition to soap operas, Reality TV generates most of the parasocial interaction and parasocial relationships on the part of the audience. According to Bob Boden, Sr. VP Programming for the Game Show Network (GSN),. Reality TV is like a game of chessits very strategic where everything is scripted and manipulatedand where there are redos if the reactions of the participants (actors) are not what the producers want. In fact, for a 44- minute show, producers are filming approximately 900 hours of action. Reality TV uses real people as actors who typically reflect the desirable 18-49 demographic age group to deliver the message. Reality TV is highly effective in accelerating the blurring between fiction and reality because the audiences who can readily identify and empathize with the actors think that all of their action is real when, in fact, most of it is scripted and choreographed. And, like in the original soap operas, the audience who has a fixation with gossip and watching private and intimate moments of others is hooked from day onethey want to know whats going to happen in the next episodethey ultimately empathize with the participants and envision themselves as being among the characters (i.e. this could happen to me), and, inevitably, viewers compare themselves to the participants. Reality Shows now come in as many genres and cover as many diverse subjects as other forms of entertainment media with such topics as talent competitions (i.e. Dancing with the Stars, Americas Got Talent, American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, The Voice, Duets ); food demonstrations and competitions (i.e. The Next Food Network Show, Master Chef, Restaurant Wars, The Iron Chef); A day in the life of celebrities and celebrity wannabes (i.e. Keeping up with the Kardashians, Julianna and Bill, the Osbornes, Jersey Shore ); social values (i.e. Teen Mom, Bachelor and Bachelorette, Bristol Palins Lifes a Tripp); survival (i.e. Survivor, The Longest Race ) and; daring bouts with nature (i.e. The Deadliest Catch) . 30

Audiences can witness everyday people who ultimately become like true celebrity role models and authoritative key opinion leaders who are often times used to deliver a message, lending immediate credibility, these actors actually become perceived star celebrities whereby audiences even aspire to become like them by mimicking their behavior and by imagining that they too can, one day, star in their own Reality TV show. Many popular and growing Reality TV shows are based upon a competition among the actors. Americans learn to be competitive from their earliest childhood where although the group has to work together, inevitably there has to be a winner (i.e. Spelling Bees, Chili Cookoffs, etc.). But, according to Bob Boden, Reality TV takes competition to a higher level. In fact, currently trending among the Reality TV shows is the highly interactive participation of the audience that can actually determine the fate of the actors. In addition to talent shows where the audience can select the winner by voting for their favorite participants leading them to ultimate victory (American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, Duets, The Voice, Dancing With the Stars, etc.), now the audience can actually dictate the action for future episodes (Glass House). However, this phenomenon can become problematic when a vulnerable audience begins to emulate the actions of the Reality TV stars when the themes and content of the Reality TV shows become adversarial and hostile to the actors, ultimately culminating in what can constitute verbal or physical abuse.
Verbal abuse is used in television, movies, music lyrics, and in many cases at home much to the detriment of children who learn that bullying is a way of life. Todays Reality TV shows ridicule and humiliate the losers. Where traditionally (in the 1950s and 1960s) both the public and the game show host rooted for the contestant, they now are ganging up and often times verbally and sometimes physically abusing him. Certain Reality TV shows stress the notion of surveillance and being watched all while being built around the idea that conflict sells as they virtually pit the participants one against the other, often creating mock fights in the studio. In fact, as many as 30 thousand people from various and diverse backgrounds and ethnicities can be interviewed to be cast as potential actors because producers realize that often times diversity brings conflict. As the titles of the shows indicate they have as their objective to weed out and stomp out the weak (The Weakest Link, Dog Eat Dog, American Idol, The Apprentice, Survivor, The Cut, The Bachelor, etc.). This format is mimicked in other countries: for example, in Romania, TV shows such as the ones hosted by Dan Negru have been criticized for being excessively mean and cruel for stereotyping minority groups and women.

One could even conclude that Reality TV actors are behaving in a more aggressive, judgmental, lascivious and meaner way during the filming of their television shows. One could also observe that in these instances when the studio audience who is interacting and participating more overtly with the actors is watching this more aggressive, judgmental, lascivious and meaner action, such as in The Jerry Springer Show, the studio audience, as a consequence , ends up rooting for more outrageous and more injurious behavior. This phenomenon begs us to ask where and how are the parameters set today in Reality TV shows? Who is to say the studio audience is not the show? And, finally, where is Diderots fourth wall? In a similar and perhaps more disturbing vein the dystopic vision of the future of Reality TV portends for both actors and by consequence the audience to take on greater and greater risk, danger and humiliation for the sake of profit, power and fame. Finally, perhaps an unintended consequence of Reality TV is the interference with evolutionary mate selection. This goes for all shows that portray glamour, sex and mating but it is most concrete and tangible in shows like Bachelor, Bachelorette, Millionaire Matchmaker and even Dancing with the Stars. The Americanization of Culture The momentum of the American media cultural machine which started in the early 20th Century has continued for almost one hundred years but because of the advent of global 31

communications and the internet, the cultural machine seems to be going faster and stronger on a daily basis. Today, we are witness to shear domination of American media influence on the world and on todays youth. According to Gitlin, in the second half of the 1980s, of the total revenue for television and film in Hollywood, export sales increased from 30% to 40% of the total. This is a direct result of the deregulation of export sales and the true expansion and exploitation of American media around the world. (Gitlin, 2002) So what has globalization done to the vision of Marshall and McLuhans Global Village? If there is a village, it speaks American. it wears jeans, drinks Coke, eats at the golden arches, walks on swooshed shoes, plays electric guitar, recognizes Mickey Mouse, James Dean, E.T., Bart Simpson, R2-D2, and Pamela Anderson. (Gitlin, 2002:176) American culture, as portrayed by the entertainment media, is so overwhelming, especially in smaller countries where America is still ingrained in peoples perception as a country they, for generations, dreamt of as an ideal, that youth risk to abandon their traditional culture and traditional values as being provincial and insignificant. Popular culture means what its users think and feel it means. For minority populations everywhere American movies and music can be taken up as cultural counterweights against the local powers. French teenagers of North African origin listen to American music and adopt American slang. Ive seen the world Bronx spray-painted on a wall in Amsterdam, were no doubt it affirms the down-home badness of young people who have never been anywhere near the terrestrial Bronx but have taken to heart some images from movies or videos (Gitlin, 2002, pp. 203-204) This type of cultural dominance can also backfire and have unexpected manifestations. On April 16, 2006, CNN reported and showed video footage of a German gunnery sergeant who was instructing his soldier before going into battle: You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African- Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways, now act. The soldier then fires his machine gun several times and yells mother fucker several times in English. The instructor then tells the soldier to curse even louder. This scene has obviously more to do with the entertainment media that both these soldiers consume and their translation into the particular reality they live than with any effective and useful infantry training that the German army needs. Another interesting social problem that American cultural domination can raise is in the area of evolutionary competition. Dill quotes from evolutionary psychology that while men are attracted to youthful women because they are more likely to conceive and give birth to healthy children, women are primarily attracted to men who have the resources and the social status to provide and protect the family and the children. While humans are hardwired for this kind of competition in natural circumstances where they interact with real live people like themselves, media has entered new, different and artificial criteria(Dill,2009) Based on the research of evolutionary psychologists about human priorities and mate selection, Dill explains that in the past, nature provided the competition that individuals were facing in looking for mates. Whereas now, it is the media that exposes people en mass to the desirable others posing impossible standards. Now, it would seem, that people compare their desirability and market value with icons such as Angelina Jolie or Bill Gates who Dill is right to call unfair competition. Dill goes on saying: How can we compete with the best in the world? What does this do to our sense of selfworth and desirability. (Dill, 2009:18-19) In fact, we may see in the course of one hour of screen time, competition at a level our ancestors were not likely to see even in the course of one lifetime (Dill 2009:18) Imagine how this problem is compounded and exacerbated and how it affects the viewers self- esteem when the media consumer is the recipient of exported American 32

entertainment media emphasizing this idealized imagery and is potentially even more vulnerable because he is even further removed, culturally, linguistically and economically from this world of glamour and wealth. How much deeper is the sentiment of self worth eroded? The Importance of Visual and Media Literacy and the Case for the Humanities in Education Potter advocates media literacy as the best way to counter-act negative media effects. If we dont know how to read, we cannot get much out of the print media. If we have trouble understanding visual and narrative conventions, we cannot get much out of television or film. (Potter, 2001, p.4) Potter compares accumulated personal knowledge to building high towers that allow us a broad perspective of the area we are looking at. Media professor Paul Messaris finds visual literacy to be of paramount importance: visual education might make a viewer more resistant to the manipulations attempted by TV commercials, magazine advertising, political campaigns, and so on. In other words, even if learning about the visual devices used in picture based media does not have any effect on a viewers comprehension of pictures or on ones other cognitive abilities, it might still make the viewer more aware of how meaning is created visually and therefore less likely to be taken in by abuses of this process. (Messaris,1994:3) Messaris goes on to futher say that visual literacy may enhance the aesthetic experience: awareness of the ways in which visual media give rise to meaning and elicit viewers responses can also be seen as providing a basis for informed aesthetic appreciation. Knowing how visual effects are achieved may lessen the vicarious thrills we might otherwise derive from visual media, but such knowledge is self evidently a prerequisite for the evaluation of artistic skill. (Messaris 1994:3) Education and the ability to critically view mass media are even more critical at a time when the border between fiction and reality is intentionally blurred by the media industry. It is my belief that the on-going de-emphasis and ultimately the neglect of the study of the humanities in high school education, which in the USA can be traced back to the 1950s and 1960s, is partly to be blamed for todays youths lack of critical ability to relate to a narrative presented both visually or in writing. As expressed by Thomas Munro, the pioneer of empirical aesthetics in America, Even the progressive wing of recent educators, consciously revolting from the classical, aristocratic education of yesterday, has tended toward a heavy emphasis on social and economic realism, often at the expense of imaginative art. The latter it sometimes condemns as escape from reality, and many of its leaders would restrict the study of art to realistic portrayals of the contemporary social scene. Thus, where as the old classical education at least paid some attention to the Bible and to Greek and Latin literature, with the rich content of myth, fantasy and folklore, the modern education gives the child comparatively little of these cultural traditions, indispensible for appreciation of past art. (Munro, 1956:40) The distancing in education from cultural heritage both in art, literature and music has left todays youth cut- off from tradition and the frame of reference offered by history. In addition, todays youth is as a consequence often unable to discern between fact and fiction and therefore to accept uncritically the new mythologies presented to him by movies or interactive video games. How audiences are emotionally affected by narrative depends to a large degree not only on the accumulated individual experience but also on the vicarious collective experience that, in most cultures, have traditionally been handed down from one generation to the next. For the first time in the history of man it is apparent that the world, the technology, and the values of a parent will not be the same as his childs world, technology, and values. It has never been true that values and the cultural organization were absolutes. It has, though, been an 33

effective assumption that, because the rate of change was slow enough, a culture could survive the truths of one generation being passed on to the next. (Toch, 1969) But even if the new generation were to give up on the knowledge of traditional stories, classical education, mythology, religion, folklore and history, they have not given up on spirituality, curiosity or fantasy. The danger is that the lack of education in the humanities creates a vacuum which will be filled by the new mythologies created by the mass entertainment media and fall upon brains unequipped to critically scrutinize and sort through it. These undiscriminating hungry minds will also be ripe to absorb all kinds of conspiracy theories. The reason why people in our civilization should always have the possibility of studying the classics is, quite simply, that people in our past have cultivated the classics. For in the classical heritage we have an area of metaphor, a common market of symbols and ideas that transcends the boundaries of both nations and periods in a way national literature never can. (Gombrich,1999 :14) My intention in this paper has not been to review all that was said or written on the subject but rather to create a platform for a discussion. I have brought pertinent arguments from different aspects of the debate regarding media effects and sought out different examples, but, do not claim them to have been exhaustive. My interest was rather in reviewing different examples to show the different facets of the problem. I have tried to show different aspects of the problematic relationship of the audience and entertainment media as it appears from different points of view, just as one would see different planes and surfaces when circumnavigating a complex abstract work of sculpture. My intention was not necessarily to offer a solution to an age old, persisting and yet constantly changing problem, but rather to explore its complexity and its different ramifications, historical, philosophical, psychological, social, and aesthetic. Perhaps it can serve as a starting point for a discussion as it advocates the necessity of inter -disciplinary collaboration on this subject.

Notes 1 In this context it is worth noting that one of the first films that portrayed a school shooting, Lindsay Andersons If. (1968), has never inspired any copycat killing. I believe this is because, in spite of the detailed planning of the armed revolt by the three boarding school protagonists in If., and the subsequent ambush and shooting of students, teachers, and representatives of the establishment in the courtyard of the school, the act is so political and so imbued with the ideology of the youth at that time, that it could not inspire an individual or a gang of copycats with criminal intent as it could, for example for Basketball Diaries or Natural Born Killers. 2 This style of painting was subsequently called trompe loeil, literally meaning to deceive or to fool the eye and flourished for a while in both the Baroque period, especially in mural paintings, and in the 20th Century photo- realism. 3 I can add from my personal experience that when I started watching this film, after it had started, without knowing anything about it, and having turned the TV on during a scene where a journalist is reporting from the deck of an aircraft carrier about movements of the Soviet army in the Persian Gulf, I was for a long moment convinced that WWIII had started. 4 Clinton on Bauer. http://www.humanrightsfirst.org; Justice Scalia defends Bauer. The Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2007; Hollywood gets it wrong on torture and interrogation. The Jack Bauer Story http://wwwprimetimetorture.org 5 Read more:http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/01/19/mark-wahlberg-insults11-families-who-is-most-insensitive-celebrity August, 1914 The Times of London, disseminated by the Bureau de la Presse and published in September 1915 La Rive Gauche. 34
6

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Fictional femininities Images of girls independence and success in the Bulgarian TV series Home of glass
Valentina Gueorguieva - St.Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia, Bulgaria

Why has feminism become so serious and stiff that young girls do not take it to be their own cause? What is wrong in wanting to be independent, strong, and successful? And why are feminist teachers and academics in universities so boringly serious about young girls wanting the wrong things, such as prince charming, marriage and the whole paraphernalia of weddings? One of the answers to these questions might be that media and popular culture has created an image of feminism that makes it unattractive to young women. Or that somehow provides a substitute for the feminist fight. In what follows, I will offer a close reading of the TV series Home of glass, outlining two main female characters Alex and Siana who are taken as examples of the images of girls independence and success created by the media. My reading is inspired by the theoretical model developed by Angela McRobbie, in her analyses of film and popular culture, where she sketches the four figures of contemporary womanhood. Following McRobbie, I will adopt the more pessimistic post-feminism stance of critical cultural studies, as opposed to the more assertive readings of TV series on behalf of the researchers in the third wave of feminism (Johnson 2007). Post-feminist Femininity In her recent book, The Aftermath of Feminism (2009) Angela McRobbie examines how feminism is instrumentalised, that is how elements of feminism are incorporated in political and institutional life, but most of all in media and popular culture, in order to propagate ideas and models about young women as a kind of substitute for feminism. This strategy of replacing the feminist movement with a sort of mediatized or popular feminism, according to her, has to ensure that a new womens movement will not re-emerge (McRobbie, 2009, 1). The moment is rightly chosen since after the decline of the second wave feminism, the aggressiveness and stiffness of the older generation of activists has made feminism quite unpalatable to younger women. The reasons for the backlash are examined in the first two chapters. But there is more to it than the seeming fact that the goals of the second wave of feminism have been achieved. Young women are fed with the promise of freedom and independence, of equality by participating in the economic market, in education and employment, but most of all in consumer culture and civil society. These are all promises that come to substitute the invention and expression of their own agency and politics. The individualist values of contemporary society contribute to this displacement of authentic interest. In actuality the idea of feminist content disappeared and was replaced by aggressive individualism, by a hedonistic female phallicism in the field of sexuality, and by obsession with consumer culture which in this current book I see as playing a vital role in the undoing of feminism. (McRobbie, 2009, 5) In the post-feminist phase, media and popular culture has produced the codes for female individualisation, as exemplified by characters like Bridget Jones, Ally McBeal or the girls from Sex and the City. These are definitely not anti-feminist movies, on the contrary, they have taken feminism into account and implicitly or explicitly ask the question, what now?(McRobbie 2009, 21). These movies and TV serials present young, beautiful, successful, strong and independent women who somehow are still unsatisfied and want to reclaim their femininity their inherent quality of being silly, sometimes clumsy, and emotional, obsessed with shopping, or cherishing fantasies of romance and marriage. Feminism, it seems, robbed women of their most treasured pleasure, i.e. romance, gossip and obsessive concerns about how to catch 39

a husband (). (McRobbie 2009, 21) The implicit suggestion in these characters is that somehow the loudly proclaimed feminism, by force of educating young women into wanting the right thing, i.e. being independent and successful, has supressed or replaced their own simple and innocent desires being girlish and playing dumb, even though self-mocking and selfdisparaging (like Bridget Jones, but also like Jane Austins Elizabeth Bennett), longing for romantic moments or seeking enjoyment. And after all showing oneself as vulnerable, which is so appealing to men. In chapter three McRobbie examines four concepts of post-feminist femininity, created by the popular culture and serving as technologies (in the sense of Michel Foucault, 1975) which offer to young women possibilities of freedom and change. These are the post -feminist masquerade, the working girl, the phallic girl, and the global girl. The post-feminist masquerade, as a figurative media representation of femininity, has emerged from the fashion-beauty complex. It plays on the physical appearance to the extent that no part of the female body is left unattended by practices of self-maintenance and clothing, thus embodying a complete perfection. It enacts a spectacular, excessive hyper femininity. Moreover, traditional feminine practices of self-maintenance are reinstated as norms, but this is not directed at mens approval, rather this is a declaration of free choice. It is also a nervous gesture women participating in the world of work, competing with men, and employed in power settings like corporative institutions, are afraid of losing their femininity. According to this version of media-constructed femininity, young women fear that their recognition as equals and appropriation of power potentially makes them not desirable to their male counterparts. But the theatricality of the masquerade, the silly hat, the too short skirt, the too high heels, are once again means of emphasising, as they did in classic Hollywood comedies, female vulnerability, fragility, uncertainty and deep anxiety, indeed panic, about the possible forfeiting of male desire through coming forward as a woman. (McRobbie, 2009, 67) The vision of the young woman as fashion and beauty victim intersects with another figure the well-educated working girl. Womens participation in the labour market, their success and economic independence which grants them access to consumer culture and the world of fashion, is the result of their inclusion in the educational system, where they now gain the upper hand over young men who seem to be discriminated in this domain. What this system encourages is willingness, motivation and aptitude on the part of young women, but also talent, determination and desire to win (McRobbie, 2009, 75). These qualities, encouraged in the educational system are sustained and further developed in the work place. But somehow girls success and young mens failure in school is not transmitted in the labour mark et, where young women lose the bid for the pay check or are covered by a glass ceiling. And there is more, as shown on the example of the film Working Girl, analysed by McRobbie. Successful women in the world of work lose the battle when it comes to men and sexuality. Thus Katherine, the main character, who has excellent qualifications and a successful career, is beaten in love by her subordinate Tess, who is nervous, unsure of herself, and eager to please(p.79) and manages to steal Katherines boyfriend and position in the same time. In the world of work, young women have to resort to the post-feminist masquerade to regain their femininity and also withhold their career positions. The third figure exemplifying freedom and independence is the phallic girl. She appropriates the freedoms, associated with masculine sexual behaviour, taking sex to be a lighthearted pleasure, recreational activity, hedonism, sport, reward and status. She adopts the traditionally masculine habits of heavy drinking, swearing, smoking, getting into fights, having casual sex, flashing her breasts in public, getting arrested by the police, consumption of pornography, enjoyment of lapdancing clubs and so on, but without relinquishing her own desirability to men, indeed for whom such seeming masculinity enhances her desirability since she shows herself to have a similar sexual appetite to her male counterparts. (McRobbie, 2009, 83-4).

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This hedonistic style of sexuality is no doubt encouraged by the consumer culture, offering everything a girl would need to overturn male domination. Thus it is a form of licensed transgression. In a way, it is a better, more assertive alternative than the masquerade version of vulnerable femininity, created by the world of fashion. But this is also a tightrope to walk, since it asks from girls to perform masculinity which somehow manages to be femininely appealing. In media interpretations, this version of femininity can be read as a provocation to feminism. The behaviour of the phallic girl provokes sexist insults on behalf of men, these girls are reprimanded for their uncontrolled transgression in the language of misogyny. In the figure of the phallic girl, as propagated by media and consumer culture, patriarchy strikes back. Finally, in the figure of the global girl the production of commercial femininities is propagated in the developing world and in countries undergoing transformation. The young girl is seen here as the bearer of social change, but also of the values of individualism and consumer culture. Popularized by the advertising campaigns of Benetton, but also by international female magazines like Elle, Vogue, Grazia, it expresses a kind of global femininity, where young girls from different races and cultures are invited to participate in the pleasures of the fashion industry, by earning their economic independence through higher qualifications (and western diplomas), rejecting racial and sexual hierarchies by the aggression of the phallic girl. These girls travel a lot for their education, but also participate in the international labour market. They exemplify freedom and success on the local level and thus become the bearers of western femininity. In the next section, I will try to illustrate the thesis about the mediatized version of feminism on the examples of two female characters in a popular Bulgarian TV series, using McRobbies four ideal-typical constructions of the images of young womanhood. Young girls freedom, success and desire in a home made of glass Home of glass (in Bulgarian Staklen dom), is produced and aired by the commercial channel bTV. Its first season was broadcasted in the summer of 2010 and by the fall of 2011 four seasons were offered to the TV audience. It is a family drama, relating the story of the owners of the first commercial centre (or mall) in Sofia, hence the title of the series. The four seasons aired so far, narrate the conflicts between families, their backstage games, betrayals, fights, wins and losses, vengeance and reconcilement. None of the families survives the vicissitudes: marriages are broken and reconstituted, relationships within couples and between parents and children are disturbed and then again strengthened. The metaphor of the home made of glass conveys also the idea of the fragility of human relationships and of the instability of the family as institution in a world of individualization and consumerism. Alex and Siana are the two younger female characters in the series. Daughters of the owners of the mall, young, clever and beautiful, they are best friends from the start to the latest episodes of the series, though their friendship also endures some torments. Alexs character is best characterized as papas princess. She is the 17-years old daughter of Atanassovi (the majoritarian shareholders of the mall) and spends her time almost exclusively in the mall, shopping or hanging out with her friends, frequently missing from school. She is in a relationship with Danny, the son of the other main shareholders family Kassabovi, who is also her classmate. In the pilot episode, she misses her French lesson to go to her boyfriends house and have sex with him. She often fights with her mother and takes advantage of her fathers fondness for her. She doesnt have a pronounced interest in anything but shopping and parties. She often misbehaves, acting as a spoiled kind who gets everything she wants. Her first lesson in life is when she discovers that Danny was unfaithful to her, leaves him and falls in love with Harry, the son of the chief of security and the hairdresser in the mall. Harry serves as driver to Atanassovi and is secretly in love with Alex. Alexs parents disapprove of their relationship and they have to keep it secret, which makes it even more romantic and amusing for Alex. Her mother Elena a selfish and arrogant corporate PR, social climber and material girl, who cheats on her husband and seeks every opportunity to make the big financial 41

hit to independence points out that Harry is way under Alexs class. But since Alex does not seem to care, Elena sets up a trial for Harry making him quit Alex, forced by Elenas tread that she will fire his parents. It is in the scene when Harry is confronting her mother when the essence of Alexs education is formulated: Now does it feel good to see her suffering? Or is this a part of your education in becoming a monster like her mother? () You should try and learn to love sometimes, its not bad.(Season 1, Episode 8) The young couple withstands the test, and Alexs relationship with Harry, but also with her father Hristo, grows stronger. It is Alexs best friend Siana who helps her make the first step to reconciliation with Harry. Siana is the daughter of Nikolai Zhekov, the executive manager and also stockholder in the mall. Her character is the one who undergoes the most serious transformations in the series in the first two seasons she is 20, confused, emotionally unstable and lonely; three years later, in seasons 3 and 4, she is confident and independent, mother of a two-year old boy. In the pilot episode, Siana is introduced to the audience sitting alone and confused in her home, holding a positive pregnancy test. Soon it becomes clear that she is having a secret relationship with her best friends boyfriend, Danny. As soon as he learns that she is pregnant, he is frightened and pushes her away. Throughout the season his attitude is ambiguous, at times frankly rude, at times faking a considerate and loving relationship, trying to convince her to get rid of the baby. Siana is tormented by his changes of mood, and never truly believes in his love for her. She hesitates about the baby, and reschedules her abortion three times. Whenever Danny is next to her she agrees about the abortion, whenever he leaves or she learns about his lies (he promises to quit Alex but never does so) she decides to keep the baby. The hardest part is that she cannot speak to anybody about her trouble. Her father is alienated, constantly missing or busy at work. When she tries to approach him, he is either leaving, or anxious, or loses his nerves. He is compensating his impotence at being a parent by giving her money. Her mother is abroad (in fact, her mother never appears in the series). Her only close friend is Alex, who learns accidentally about their affair and about the baby and quarrels with both of them. Siana feels guilty and isolated. The next episodes show her alone with her diary, facing her fathers lack of concern, her friends disapproval and Dannys lies. It is the barman (and confidant for everybody in the company) who spells out for her the reason for her being isolated and hated by everyone: It is not right what you are doing, it is not right that you are trying to blackmail Danny with this baby.(Season 1, Episode 8) In the final episode of the season, she finally takes the decision to make an abortion. But it is too late, and she has to accept an illegal abortion. There are complications and she almost loses her life. All of a sudden, trying to prevent her from the illegal abortion and trying to save her life, Danny discovers that he has feelings for her. At the end of the season he asks her to forgive him, and promises to stay with her and have family. She reveals to him that according to the doctors she will no longer be able to have kids. In season two, Sianas father is imprisoned for his frauds, but leaves a substantial sum to Siana. She lives alone in her fathers apartment and learns to be independent. Danny is by her side cherishing the dream of creating a happy family with her. But it seems that she has not learned the lesson she received in the previous episode of her life. She is still confused, and traumatised. Her friends are tired by her depressions. She is obsessive with Danny, embarrasses him with continuous reproaches, and one night resorts to self-injury (cuts her hand) to prevent him from going to a party without her. Insisting repetitively that she is unable to have children and hence is an invalid, she adopts the behaviour of a victim and makes him feel guilty. Eventually he cheats on her and they split up on these grounds. Happily for her, this is the way to her awakening and eventual recovery. She has a onenight stand with the new barman, and soon after she falls for the ex-convict Charly, the bad boy character in the series who is much older than her. Though their meetings are irregular and their relationship is kept secret, they develop feelings for each other. In the final episode of the season she learns that he has planned a bomb attack on the mall and denounces him. By a twist of chance, she is the only victim of the attack, but has no serious injuries. In the hospital, she discovers tht she is pregnant. 42

In seasons one and two, Siana is longing to have the real loving family she has never had with her father, and strives to create a lasting relationship with Danny. She embraces the traditional image of femininity as motherhood in a happy marriage, and suffers deeply when she is deprived of this possibility. The promise of a long-term engagement with Danny is not helping her get over the trauma of impossible motherhood. Consciously or not, she rejects this model after Dannys betrayal. In a conversation with Alex, she discovers that being a woman is more than being a mother, and that she can be attractive to men even without the promise of family life. Are you crazy, do you know how many guys do not think about babies and family, they will be fighting for you!, Alex says trying to raise her spirits after the separation with Danny (season 2, Episode 13). Siana discovers casual sex and embraces a different version of femininity being desirable for her equal sexual appetite. Curiously, it is in her episode as a phallic girl that she regains the promise of being a mother. During the whole season two, Alex is split between two sets of moral values: the highstandard consumerist values of her own family, and the rebelling anti-consumerist values of her boyfriend Harry. The conflict with her parents is aggravating: they retrieve her credit card first, then her mobile phone, and then they hire a new driver to spy on her and follow her everywhere she goes. In a desperate attempt to put her back in track, her parents threaten to send her to study in Besancon, a small town in France she has never heard of. We decided with your father that since who have no purpose and ideas in your life, somebody has to set up your goals, Elena said when the Besancon prospect is announced (Season 2, Episode 5). Alex and Harry have a parallel dream to escape on a sunny surfers island away from civilization, where they will live in a tent on the beach and wont have to buy anything. Alex leaves home and starts working as a bar tender to gather money for their escape. Despite his ideological resistance, Harry enters the ranks of security guards under his fathers management. They both move in Sianas huge apartment, to live with her and Danny. Everything seems perfect, if it were not for Sianas crises and Alexs one irresistible weakness shopping. She spends all their savings on a crazy shopping tour one day. They have to restart with savings and the departure is postponed, for the first time. The next time it is in order to have more money to buy a more luxury tent, as Alex suggests. Then it is for a camper, and so on. Actually Alex has doubts about the departure; she feels that it is not exactly her dream. Well, I think I can get Harrys idea about the island, but you, what will you do without a shower, a beautician and without credit card, what will you do?, Danny says to Alex when she grumbles about the cheap beer and junk food dinner. She has discovered the world of poor people and is not sure that she wants to live in it. By the end of the season, she surprisingly receives an offer to join the team of her favourite musical TV presenter. She has to give an answer immediately and jumps in without discussing it with Harry. Later she tells him that this is her dream, her island in a way. He understands and encourages her to live her dream. The same night he leaves her a note and hits the road to the island with the camper he has bought for their dream. Alex is having troubles with the well-educated, working girl formula of femininity. Motivation and aptitude are definitely not her best qualities. At the same time, she is raised in high consumer standards and will sooner or later face the question of economic independence. And she wants to be famous. So far, she has not dealt with the issue of being an adult she strives for freedom, but is still dependent on her parents. In seasons three and four Alexs issues with independence and luxury are aggravating. In the beginning of season three (the plot pictures the familiar characters three years later), Alex is a media star she is the famous young female presenter of the musical TV show where she had started. She is in an open-ends relationship with her colleague Edi, the one who once upon a time invited her to join the show. She spends her time between parties, giving autographs to fans, and light-hearted work in the studio, where she is the charming sexy presenter. She is being rude to her (now separated) parents and ignores her former friends who are now way out of her league. We see her in an episode of transgression when she is arrested by the police for parking violation, drunk driving, insulting a policeman and trying to bribe him. It all happens in front of 43

a bar when she tries to get in her car to move to another party, but the police are there with a ticket for unauthorised parking. And since she is a star, the scene is surrounded by paparazzi with video cameras. She shouts, swears, tries to escape, and hits the policemen. The video is shown in the morning TV emissions. She strikes back with a video comment on her own video, which is left without comment. But when she shoots a second comment video, in a provocative swimsuit, with aggressive language and arrogant attacks against the presidency campaign of her step father, she is fired by the TV producers for her scandalous behaviour (You are a complete downfall, her boss says when firing her, Season 3, Episode 4). She sinks into depression and indulges in drinking, cocaine and sex with strangers. Her fathe rs attempt to bring her back to reason has no effect, since he himself is not a good example (he is having a bad period after the separation with Elena). It is her old boyfriend Harry (miraculously back from his island) who saves her from attempted rape one of her crazy nights, and helps her get rid of the drug addiction. But Harry belongs to another world. When he tries to live with her at her parents house (they invite him to stay, because they cannot cope with her addition), the conflict between the familys standards and Harrys rebel against consumerism is deepened. Alex is also tormented by her parents control and Harrys lack of trust. Because she is an addict, they never leave her on her own and constantly suspect her. She feels imprisoned and runs away from home in a romantic flight for freedom. It is Charlie Sianas bad boy lover who spell is out for her: You do not really have a problem. () You had nothing to do, you had the money, and you started with cocaine. () You just do not know what to do with your freedom, kid! (Season 4, episode 5) At the end of season four, Alex settles up with Harry in his parents house. She tries to get back to school and finish her journalism degree. At first sight, it seems that Alexs rebel is against her own world, the world of fame and beauty. It is exactly this same world that encouraged in her the excessive taste for enjoyment, unconstrained youthful freedom from all norms of conduct, success, and spectacular (mediastar) femininity. Her issue with parental values (the world of consumption) intersects with a deeper problem her way of conceiving freedom leads her to nothing. You were right, I really have no purpose in life, she admits to her mother in a moment of intimacy (Season 3, Episode 5). She still has to discover her way of being an independent woman. For Siana, the issue of independence is miraculously solved during the three years gap between the final events in season two and the opening episode of season three. In her first appearance, we see her holding a baby cup in one of her hands and a spoon in the other, a little blue jacket under one arm and a telephone between her year and shoulder. She wears business shirt and pants, and complains that the baby sitter is late again, trying to solve some urgent working problems on the phone. Siana is a single parent and has a successful career as the new malls PR. In season three, she is the ideal working girl. Picturing her in the moment of juggling with the baby cup and the telephone, in a perfect business dress, is re-inserting her image in the post-feminist masquerade. She barely handles the two roles (of the mother and the working girl), she needs help. She is fragile. Even now when she is strong and independent, she is vulnerable. When Danny is back from New York on the occasion of his mothers second marriage, he decides to abandon his studies abroad for her. Prince charming is back and fulfils the dream of a happy family. Sianas major fear in season three is that she doesnt want to know who the biological father of her child is. Her life was so turbulent at the time of conception, that she really does not know who the father is. She is happy with Danny, and wants to have him by her side. Danny loves her son and wants to raise him as his own kid. He completes the necessary legal action. They are officially accepted as a couple with kid by the older families of Kassabovi and Atanassovi. The only thing that might ruin their magic is an eventual discovery of the biological father. And he shows up Charlie is performing a secret DNA test and proves that he is the father. At first, Siana pushes him away and insists to hide this embarrassing truth. Charlie and Danny agree, but Danny suggests that living in a lie is not a good thing for the kid, and for 44

everybody. Eventually, Siana allows Charlie to spend time with his son, and Danny announces the truth to their parents. Though it is peculiar, it is a happy and stable marriage-withoutmarriage. Everything seems to be perfect and in order. But Siana has to fight with her daemons from the past. In season four her father is released from prison and tries to regain her confidence. She has not yet forgiven him. Besides, he has committed a crime against Danny, and if she wants to keep Danny she has to reject her father. Though she is happily in love with Danny, she fears that she might fall again for Charlie, and plays a risky game living with Danny and frequently meeting Charlie to let him spend more time with his son. In a momentary impulse, she has sex with Charlie. She has prince charming by her side, but is fatally attracted to a bad boy. At the end of season four, we see her again guilty and confused. Conclusion The series employs three different models of femininity: the post-feminist masquerade, the working girl and the phallic girl. Both Alex and Siana participate in the post-feminist masquerade, dressing up and performing the role of a complete beauty, but somehow always fragile and in need of help. In her teenage years, Alex is a fashion victim under papas protection. Then she is a media star, but in a moment of brisk and spectacular failure (for which she is the only one to blame) she falls from the stars. And is saved by her boyfriend. In the third season, Siana is economically independent. We see her in the figure of the working girl. She is bold, successful, and beautiful. But this image is inseparable from the image of the single parent. It is the fact of being a mother that makes her vulnerable, according to the plot. And her old daemons too. At a certain point, both girls pass through the phase of female phallicism. In the case of Siana, it is a transgression from the family values and the dream of motherhood that she is deprived of. In the case of Alex, it is an expression of her impossibility to define freedom, and her way to independence from parents. It can also be read as a transgression of the values of consumer culture. But Siana is never healed of her dream of happy family with prince charming, never recovers from her fatal attraction to bad bays as a legacy of her phallicism. She is not comfortable with either of these two roles. On the example of Siana the spectator sees that being independent is also being caught in between different orders of values: of economic independence, of motherhood, of sexual enjoyment. Her drama is that she cannot find a way out of this dilemma. On the example of Alex we see that spectacular female success is risky. Even when a girl fulfils her dream of fame, it turns out that it was empty. And maybe freedom and independence was not a good promise for young girls. Playing with these models of femininity, the TV series addresses a critical question to feminism: Isnt that what you, feminists, wanted? Now see what youve got. Bibliography
Foucault, Michel (1975) Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison. Paris, Gallimard. Johnson, Merri Lisa, ed. (2007) Third Wave Feminism and Television: Jane Puts It in a Box . London, I.B.Tauris & Co. McRobbie, Angela (2009) The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture, and Social Life. London, Sage Publications.

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The Uncomfortable Hero: J.R.R. Tolkiens and Peter Jacksons Aragorn in Dialogue with owyn and Arwen
Janka Kascakova, Catholic University in Ruzomberok, Slovakia May I not now spend my life as I will? (owyn, The Return of the King, 767)

For all her wisdom and lineage she could not forbear to plead with him to stay yet for a while. (App. A, v, 1037)

As has already been stated several times, the Aragorn of Tolkiens Lord of the Rings and that of Peter Jacksons film adaptations of the novel are not exactly the same character. 1 While the former was mostly drawn from the traditions and culture of (early) Middle Ages (Ford and Reid, 2009) and is firmly attached to the logic and environment of Tolkiens mythical world, the latter is designed to please the contemporary public and is accordingly modified and modernized. There are many controversies about these and other alterations which are not likely to end soon, often disregarding the fact that books and films are two different kinds of art and that, as James G. Davis put it, relying as they do on visual images, films can add a great deal to the discussion and understanding of books (2008, 55). Although this paper also engages in a discussion about both the novel and the films, its aim is not to enumerate the differences between them or criticize Jackson for his choices. Its ambition is to analyze whether this downsizing of Aragorn applies and how it is reflected on the two special occasions in which even the original Aragorn is out of his familiar and firm ground: these are Aragorns interactions with owyn in Medusel and his wife Arwen on his deathbed. Tolkiens Aragorn is a man that had been working tirelessly and for many years against Sauron and towards his own kingship. Although he is not completely devoid of doubts and sometimes questions his choices, his general aims and intentions are fixed and he pursues them with great wisdom, experience and perseverance. He does not seem to speak much or needlessly and his words are taken seriously by those who know him.2 He is experienced in the ways of his world and, as such, is a very valuable companion and guide. Yet, considering his environment and the hardships of his extraordinary life, which take him into the worst battles and deepest troubles, it is no surprise there is one domain in which he is rather clumsy, if not inexperienced and that is in the world of women. The scarcity of women in The Lord of the Rings, which has often been commented on3, seems to be, at least to some extent, also a quality of that fictional world (although there must be more of them than the book itself presents) and is definitely the reality of Aragorns life. It is of no surprise then that the only times when his speech is doubted and seriously challenged are connected to women owyn and Arwen. In their presence, Aragorns words, although he himself keeps the outward
1 2

See for example Wiggins (2004), Morgan (2007) Even his enemies recognize the strength that is hidden behind his shabby appearance, shrinking from the power of his speech (the wild men in league with Orcs at Helms Deep, The Two Towers, 528) or of his mere gaze (as the evil mouth of Sauron in front of the Black Gate, The Return of the King, 870) 3 The discussions about the role of women in The Lord of the Rings range from absolute condemnation of Tolkien (and his work) as misogynistic to favourable critiques highlighting the admirable appearances of Galadriel and owyn in The Lord of the Rings and many other active and interesting women in other works: as for example Lthien Tinviel in The Silmarillion. Most of these discussions are outside the scope of this paper.

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signs of composure and his usual determination, lose some of their potency and persuasive power. The meeting with owyn at Medusel proves very hard for Aragorn indeed. She is obviously a kind of woman he has not met before in his life. What is more, she falls in love with him and thus makes the whole situation even more difficult. owyn is an exceptional and brave woman. She is unhappy and discontent, tied to her fate and unable to escape, bound in the cage of traditions and restraints. In the novel, Aragorn and owyn meet only twice in Rohan (before and after the battle at Helms Deep) and the second one of the two is arguably one of the most intriguing parts of the novel. owyn begs Aragorn to take her with him claiming she is weary of skulking in the hills and wishing to face peril and battle (The Return of the King, 767). Aragorn appeals to the (for him absolutely sacred) sense of duty and receives the most unexpected retort: Too often have I heard of duty, she cried. But am I not of the House of Eorl, a shieldmaiden and not a dry-nurse? I have waited on faltering feet long enough. Since they falter no longer, it seems, may I not now spend my life as I will? (The Return of the King, 767) owyns words spring from her heart and it is obvious that Tolkien sympathizes with her rather than with Aragorns cautious answers. Every new argument he gives is rejected with more and more spirit and owyn claims for herself the right to choose her path in life and her destiny. As Marjorie Burns put it, her words are written with a conviction that indicates how deeply Tolkien sympathized with owyn and with her chaffing role (2008, 143-144). And it is not only Tolkien who sympathizes with her; Aragorn is obviously uneasy too, losing his firm ground. Although his answers are reasonable and logical, and he is thoroughly within his role, it is her, not him, with the stronger arguments. It seems as if in that moment some of the set rules and persuasions of Aragorns world are shaken and he is well aware of the emptiness and inadequacy of his words. Rather than actually persuading her about her place and duties, he is merely calming her down and trying to dissuade her from her intentions. Because Aragorn, just like Tolkien, may sympathize with her plea, yet he does not want her to follow him. He knows she is in love with him and that it is for a wrong reason; not loving him, but the aura of independence and great strength surrounding him: in me she loves only a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the fields of Rohan (The Return of the King, 849). But her blindness in love does not make her blind to the inefficiency of his words she clearly sees through him and her words fall very hard indeed. All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death. (The Return of the King, 767) This discussion ended, Aragorns leaving of owyn is deeply troubled although only those who knew him well and were near to him saw the pain that he bore ( The Return of the King, 768). It seems symbolical that immediately after this conversation Aragorn sets out on the dreadful journey to the Paths of the Dead, where he is paradoxically much more persuasive and in control than with owyn. Clearly, he is not afraid of challenge and hardships of any sort, once they fall within the scope of his predestined path and training. On the Paths of the Dead Aragorn is himself again, bearing a great burden and even supporting others, no matter how hard it is for him. This is where he belongs, this is the journey that has lain in front of him for ages and he knows what to do. But a discussion with a woman he is unable to help, and what is more, one whose situation he unintentionally makes even worse, might prove a more challenging thing than an army of dead he knew he would have to face one day. The interaction between Aragorn and owyn in the film trilogy is much longer and serves a rather different purpose. The key lines from the book dialogues were kept, but their ordering and placement in the context of the film create a whole new meaning due to a different purpose of the director and writers. The discussion concerning owyns fear of a cage does not happen after the victory at Helms deep but before, and owyn does not only say that she can 47

wield a blade, Aragorn sees her use it and they cross swords. The ensuing dialogue could, at least for a spectator unfamiliar with the book, seem a bit startling and unexpected and owyns words are pronounced a bit matter-of-factly, losing some of their potency and the weight of Tolkiens owyns grief. Aragorn: You have some skill with a blade. owyn: Women of this country learned long ago: those without swords can still die upon them. I fear neither death nor pain. Aragorn: What do you fear, my lady? owyn: A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them. And all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire. Aragorn: You are a daughter of kings, a shieldmaiden of Rohan. I do not think that would ne your fate. (The Two Towers, scene 26) Interestingly, it is not owyn herself here, but Aragorn, who calls her a shieldmaiden o f Rohan,4 in fact giving her encouragement she does not get from Tolkiens Aragorn. But just as in the book, here too his words sound more shallow than they usually do and his encouragement is rather empty. The film interaction between Aragorn and owyn in The Two Towers has a completely new purpose to that in the novel. While in the latter there is never a shadow of doubt that owyn will ever be successful in her love for Aragorn, the film counts on the audience being unfamiliar with the book and suggests a love triangle between Aragorn, Arwen and owyn, keeping the spectators in suspense as to which of the two will be his chosen one. The suspense is further enhanced by an added scene of Arwens departure for the Grey Havens, inserted among the scenes of Aragorn with owyn in Rohan, and by the fact that Arwens change of mind and return to Rivendell does not occur until the last film, The Return of the King (scene 9). Aragorns discussions with owyn in the film are less ceremonial and more frequent than in the book. owyns love has more ground for flourishing, they get to talk about some ordinary things and, an ingredient necessary for both the modern spectators and the growth of love, they laugh together, which is in stark contrast with the stern and formal dialogues of the novel. It is Aragorn who catches owyn in his arms when Gandalf is healing Thoden (The Two Towers, scene 20) and it his he who comes and tucks her in while she sleeps, most unaccountably, not in her room, but on some sofa in the house (The Return of the King, scene 7) all this, arguably, to enhance the love potential of an otherwise love-conflict-free story. Further on, there is a scene in which owyn serves Aragorn a soup that looks (and judging from Aragorns face also is) disgusting; it is quite funny but a rather gender-biased addition (The Two Towers, scene 32). It corroborates the usual clich that women in professions, especially in typically male professions, lose their femininity (and cooking skills). Most of these scenes, whether added or modified, help support the claim that Aragorn is indeed smaller in scope and lesser in nature (Wiggins, 2004, 121); he is less supernatural and stately and more of a modern man. He has human warmth in him that Tolkiens Aragorn only rarely betrays. Some of Aragorns helplessness in the face of a woman remains in the film version too, but his pain and suffering for owyn is less pronounced. This certainly results from the fact that owyns situation and her fear of a cage are also comparatively less obvious. While Tolkiens owyn is a highly tragic character distant, reserved, utterly alone and mostly characterized by words like cold, stern and white, Jacksons is just a very unhappy woman but still able to laugh and take an intense interest in the well-being of others. However, her later attachment to Faramir, within the development of her character in the film, is arguably more natural in contrast to the book which seemed to have indicated she would die heroically and tragically and her love for Faramir came as a surprise.
4

For an interesting discussion on the possible implications of the word shieldmaiden and of gendered warriors in Peter Jacksons The Lord of the Rings see Buttsworth (2006)

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The case of Aragorns long desired Arwen is even more complicated. It is often claimed that Arwen mostly fulfills the role of a prize or, as Merry puts it much less prosaically referring to himself of a baggage to be called for when all is over (The Return of the King, 756). It is only understandable that Jackson opted for a more active and visible Arwen to make the film more modern-spectator-friendly. But Jackson is far from going against the grain of Tolkiens text, he in fact develops an aspect of the story that Tolkien could not for reasons of space and structure. I regard the tale of Arwen and Aragorn as the most important of the Appendices; it is a part of the essential story, and is only placed so, because it could not be worked into the main narrative without destroying its structure: which is planned to be hobbito-centric, that is, primarily a study of the ennoblement (or sanctification) of the humble. (Letters, 2006, 237) Thus, most of the story of Arwen and Aragorn is placed in the Appendices. Yet its importance and also its possible hope for future separate treatment is clearly visible on its narrative technique. While most of the Appendices are chronicles of history, deeds and names of different nations and races of Middle-earth and are predominantly in the 3rd person narration (with only occasional direct speeches), this story actually records many of the dialogues between the lovers, out of which the one on the death bed is arguably the most important. In the main text of the novel, Arwen the Evenstar of her people, daughter of Elrond, and the one in whom it was said that the likeness of Lthien had come on earth again (The Fellowship of the Ring, 221), - appears only at the feast in Rivendel and towards the end, when she gets married to Aragorn. The first time she is presented through the eyes of Frodo who strongly admires her beauty: such loveliness in living thing Frodo had never seen before nor imagined in his mind (The Fellowship of the Ring, 221). Frodo is just a simple and still relatively inexperienced Hobbit, but the reaction of Aragorn the Heir of the Kings on his first seeing her is not any different he mistakes her for Lthien, because she is so beautiful. Only later he noticed the elven light in her eyes and the wisdom of many days; yet from that hour he loved Arwen Undmiel daughter of Elrond (Appendix A, v, 1033). He does not fall in love because of her wisdom but, from this quote, it seems rather in spite of it, in spite of the fact that she is much older and, as this quotation implies, subsequently wiser than him. Aragorn, as a Nmenorean and an heir of the Kings, is given the privilege to die when he chooses. Arwen evidently guesses beforehand what he is about to do, but he does not tell her openly, she seems to be left in suspense when it is going to happen. Arwen knew well what he intended, and long had foreseen it; nonetheless she was overborne by her grief. Would you then, lord, before your time leave your people that live by your word? she said, Not before my time, he answered. For if I will not go now, then I must soon go perforce. And Eldarion our son is a man full-ripe for kingship. And for all her wisdom and lineage she could not forbear to plead with him to stay yet for a while. She was not yet weary of her days and thus she tasted the bitterness of the mortality that she had taken upon her. ( Appendix A, v, emphasis mine) Although the reader is informed that she tasted the bitterness of the mortality, she does not seem to be unhappy so much for the fact that Aragorn is going to die (which she had known literally for ages), but more because she thinks its before his time. This can be interpreted in two ways, either she does not think him sufficiently old and weak, or, - and this one is even more probable because she was not given time to properly say goodbye, to get used to the idea, and that everything happened in spite of her. The dialogue betrays that after the 6 -score years they spent together, Aragorn still decides everything alone, and she is expected to forbear to plead with him to stay yet for a while. Whether one or the other, Aragorn does not behave like a man deeply in love which does not mean he was not in love. As Burns put it very aptly [Tolkiens] males tend to keep firm control of their emotions, so much so that they often appear impervious to romance or only passively involved (2008, 141-142). This can indeed explain Aragorns 49

seemingly impersonal and detached reference to the sorrow connected to his parting with Arwen: I speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world (Appendix A, v, 1037). The way he says it makes it seem as if it was only Arwen feeling the grief, yet it is obviously his way of keeping distance from his own feelings, always struggling to behave according to the expectations connected to his position and sex. Just like in his discussion with owyn, Aragorn is uncomfortable entering a female world and, in crucial moments, hides his uneasiness and real feelings behind big words and rules that serve him so well in his dealings with other people. In this last dialogue with his wife, Aragorn sounds rather sententious and says some truly strange things. Maybe the most intriguing is his proposition to Arwen to repent, go to Valinor and bear the memory of their love there, even though he knows very well that the last ship left many years ago and that by choosing mortality, Arwen excluded herself forever from Valinor.5 In this discussion, there are two striking observations; not only that it should have happened far earlier, not on his deathbed, where Aragorn simply ends the argument and dies (we could almost say he ended the argument by dying), but also that Aragorn, for all his wise words, does not seem to get his message through to Arwen. Although he speaks of hope and suggests life after death, he does not seem to be persuasive enough to console Arwen. Many scholars understand Aragorns last sentence as an expression of optimism and hope. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! We are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. Farewell! (App. A, v, 1038) But the context of the whole discussion, and other circumstances surrounding the story of Arwen and Aragorn, make the situation much less straightforward. For one, the constant comparisons between Arwen and Lthien create expectations towards Arwens behaviour as well as similarities between their married lives. But apart from the fact that Arwen loses her immortality for a mortal man and her appearance, there is nothing to suggest similarities between the two. Even if one disregards her passivity, contrasting so much with Lthiens activity (sometimes explained as the proof of the decay of Elves), there is the question of the ending of these two stories. According to the myth, nobody knows where Beren and Lthien died and where they are buried (Silmarillion, Of Beren and Lthien, 187), but it is more or less obvious that they are somewhere together as they had always been in life. Contrary to that, Aragorn and Arwen are buried apart - Aragorn in the House of the Kings in the Silent Street in Minas Tirith and Arwen in Lrien, on the hill of Cerin Amroth. There is only one slight hint at a possible meeting of the two after death, and that is made long before they even got married when the Fellowship passes through Lrien: And taking Frodos hand in his, [Aragorn] left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as living man. (The Fellowship of the Ring, 343) If he didnt come there as a living man, it might supposed he came there as a dead man. Although this hint is really very small and it can be argued that it is just a manner of speaking, the very nature of Tolkiens writing and his linguistic background suggest that he would not take this way of talking about Aragorn without at least being aware of its possible meaning. What is more there is another similar situation, when Frodo and the Fellowship are leaving Lrien. And here the author only says: To that fair land Frodo never came again (The Fellowship of the Ring, 368) without any reference to living or dead.

The question of the Last Ship is an intriguing one. Alt hough the Last Ship is officially that which carried Elrond, Galadriel, Gandalf, Bilbo and Frodo to Valinor ( Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power, 315), the appendices betray the fact that there has been quite a traffic even after that by all means there were at least two more ships leaving the one with Sam after the death of Rosie and another with Legolas and Gimli. The Last Ship marks the end of Eldar in Middle-earth, so its name seems rather symbolical than literal and and that is clear from both Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, sailing to Valinor is not a matter of having a ship but having a permission to go which Arwen lost when she decided to become mortal.

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So this hint could be considered as at least some support for Aragorns hopeful words given as consolation to Arwen were it not for Arwens reactions, which seem to make his effort futile. This end is tragic not because of the death, but because it seems to distance Arwen from Aragorn in a way that death never distanced Lthien from Beren. This last dialogue between Aragorn and Arwen makes it obvious as to why Jackson chose to rewrite this scene and their mutual relationship completely, even more than his relationship to owyn. The modern audience, untrained in the ways of medieval literature, would certainly reject them as too cold and ceremonious. No part of the deathbed dialogue has been used; instead, there is a completely new one between Elrond and Arwen all made up by the script writers. Elrond, as a loving father, is trying to persuade Arwen to leave and share the fate of other Elves, waiting for him in the safety of Valinor. In this scene, any modern parent can easily identify with Elrond and his situation. Supernatural powers or not, he acts like any loving father, trying to dissuade his child from what he sees as her future grief and desperation. Part of it is also selfish, not willing to part with his daughter for eternity, by him obviously painting the future in much darker colours than he sees it. Elrond: Arwen. It is time. The ships are leaving for Valinor. Go now before it is too late. Arwen: I have made my choice. E: He is not coming back. Why do you linger when there is no hope? A: There is still hope. (The Two Towers, scene 38) Arwens insistence on hope echoes her cries at Aragorns deathbed in the book version when Aragorn lies down and dies, she cries Estel, Estel which in fact means hope. What is more, this name, according to the book, was given to Aragorn by Elrond so that he remain hidden from the sight of the enemy, but also so that his true lineage and future burden is not revealed to him until the proper time comes. At the same time, it correctly identifies what he is for the Elves and People of Middle-earth: their hope against the Enemy. In this context, then, Elronds insistence in the film on there being no hope for Arwen would be illogical, yet, there is no reference to the name Estel and its meaning there, so the film remains perfectly within its internal logic and created universe. In the film, Aragorns death and his departure from Arwen is not presented directly but using the voiceover of Elrond, painting Arwens future as black. Elrond: If Aragorn survives this war, you will be parted. If Sauron is defeated and Aragorn made king and all that you hope for comes true, you will still have to taste the bitterness of mortality. Whether by sword or the slow decay of time Aragorn will die. (voice over) And there will be no comfort for you, no comfort to ease the pain of his passing. He will come to death, an image of the splendor of the kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world. But you, my daughter, you will linger on in darkness and in doubt as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Here you will dwell bound to your grief under the fading trees until all the world is changed and the long years of your life are utterly spent. Arwen. There is nothing for you here. Only death. Do I not also have your love? (The Two Towers, scene 38) The most interesting shift appears in the persons presented in the scenes. While the appendix features the two of them alone after all the others had left them - and pictures the real situation, the film version gives Arwens father Elrond the role of one who narrates the story of Aragorns death, and that only as a prophecy. This shift is very interesting, it gave Jackson more space for maneuvering. The prophesied fate is not the real fate and Elrond acts as killjoy who, as it is implied, does not necessarily have to be right. There is also a seemingly minor change in the manner of his death, which is in fact quite significant for the different outcome of the whole story. Elrond says that Aragorn will die by sword or the slow decay of time, completely avoiding the extraordinary gift of him choosing his time of dying. This modification is one of the means of making the original story much less cold and surprising and Aragorn, at least in the eyes of modern spectators, much less responsible for Arwens grief. 51

Another element that makes this adaptation completely contrary to the written text is the question of children. In the film Arwen is persuaded by her father that it is not worth waiting for Aragorn because he will either fail or, if not, their life together will be short and she will have to face the desperation and death alone. Arwen is already on her way to the Grey Havens when she herself has a prophetic vision and sees her future son, Eldarion (The Return of the King, scene 9). So it is in fact not Aragorn himself but the possibility of their child that make her come back and claim that there is not only death but life too. For the film Arwen, Eldarion is the hope rather than Aragorn. However, there is no doubt that for the book Arwen, the only hope is the one who bears that name and that is Estel Aragorn. While one of Aragorns arguments in support of his departure is the ripeness of Eldarion for the throne, she does not heed him, she does not even refer to him in her answers. What is more, the text further states that they did not only have a son but also (an unspecified number of) daughters but none of them made her want to live on or reconcile with Aragorns death. She leaves the grave of her husband and her living children and goes to roam the empty Lrien where she dies and is buried.6 Jacksons story of Aragorn and Arwen is thus a complete reversal of the books story, certainly in a vein much closer to the tastes of a modern audience and their opinions on fatherchild (Elrond and Arwen) and mother-child (Arwen and Eldarion) relationships. Jacksons Arwen does roam Lrien too, but since the forest is neither identified nor identifiable as that of Lrien, the spectators unfamiliar with Tolkiens text might well suppose this is just any forest close to Minas Tirith and will thus miss the fact she went away and died miles from Aragorn. For all the hope in Tolkiens Aragorns words, the end of the story of Arwen and Aragorn is very sad. Arwen seems untouched by the hope he is talking about and she is surrounded by an aura of utter desperation and grief. The lovers are apart and whether they meet or not is only very vaguely hinted at. The overall tone of desperation is further enhanced by the fact that it is not only Aragorn but also Tolkien who abandons Arwen. While there is a clear note of sympathy for owyn from him, it seems as if in the case of Arwen he was on the side of Aragorn; that is, on the side of duty and propriety. Jacksons major changes to their story smoothed the coldness of the final farewell and made it a question of a distant and only potential future. While the spectator is not expected to doubt that the end of Aragorn will be close to Elronds vision, Arwens vision of her child is calculated to raise the expectation that Arwen would not leave and roam the world alone but that she would find consolation in her child or children. Analyzing Aragorns dealings with owyn and Arwen one thus comes to a surprising conclusion. While all the interactions with owyn and some with Arwen in the film are proof of the claim that Aragorn is indeed downsized and less heroic than his book version, the portrayal of his death in the film is the opposite. Although it certainly is extraordinary to have the possibility to die and truly heroic to muster the courage to die in the right moment, yet the way Aragorn speaks to Arwen in their last moments together slightly spoils the impression. On the contrary, Jackson chose not to let him speak on his deathbed or did not mention that he died of his own accord, and that paradoxically presented him in a better light, granting him a departure more heroic than he originally received from Tolkien.

Bibliography Buttsworth, S. (January 2006). Shield (or Shielded) Maiden of Rohan? Representations of the gendered Warrior in Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings. Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, 10, 1. Burns, M. (2008). Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkiens Middle -earth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Davis, J.G. (2008). Showing Saruman as Faber: Tolkien and Peter Jackson. Tolkien Studies, 5.
6

Actually, there is no way of knowing who or whether anybody at all buried Arwen. Lrien was deserted by the time she went there in her grief and Tolkien only states that she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed (App. A, v, 1038).

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Ford, J.A., & Reid, R.A. (2009). Councils and Kings: Aragorns Journey Towards Kingship in J.R.R. Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings and Peter Jacksons The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien Studies,6. Jackson, P. (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004) The Two Towers, The Return of the King The Lord of the Rings. Theatrical and Extended Editions. Dir. Peter Jackson. New Line. Morgan, G. A. (2007). I Dont Think Were in Kansas Anymore: Peter Jacksons Film Interpretation of Tolkiens Lord of the Rings. In Fantasy Fiction Into Film: Essays. ed. Leslie Stratyner and James R. Keller. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 21-34. Tolkien, J.R.R. (2006). The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, eds. Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien. London: Harper Collins Publishers. (1995). The Lord of the Rings. London: HarperCollins Publishers. (2004). The Silmarillion. London: HarperCollins Publishers. Wiggins, K. M. (2004). The Art of the Story-Teller and the Person of the Hero. In Croft, J., ed. Tolkien on Film: Essays on Peter Jacksons The Lord of the Rings . Altadena, CA: The Mythopoeic Press, 103-122.

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Identity and narrativity - Circe and Proteus

Daniela Rovena-Frumuani, Adriana tefnel University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania Abstract Paradoxical entity, source of conflicts and illusions, real or imagined, time reconstructed in time through memory or marked by projects and utopias, the identity is the dynamic system of representations through which the social actor (individual or group) orients his behavior and organizes his/her projects. During the existential trajectory, the individual integrates new identity marks (adult, parental figure, teacher, member of a party, etc.) and loses ancient marks (child, Romanian in the case of emigrants, etc.). A heavily metaphorical label for the identity has been that of a toolbox (Devreux, 1972), instruments used by the subject in conformity with the interactional context. Emblem of modernity, the individualization process appears as a personal construction and appropriation of different social roles. Through the identity construction a person searches for the significance of his existence and answers to the question Who am I? Through the different roles a person shows in his action he/she conforms to the roles expectancies (Vlsceanu, 2007, p.131). Using Paul Ricoeurs narrative identity as well as the identity ambivalence (defined by P Charaudeau, 2002:300): external (psycho/social identity) and internal (discursive) we will analyze the way through which (mainly storytelling) we construct/deconstruct the floating identity. The new nomadic, polymorphic identity is inscribed at the frontiers of one and multiple, of roots and migrations. In order to define this complex phenomenon of articulation, the specialists have proposed the process of inter-structuring of the subject and the institutions; that is why we will try to see how media contribute in the structuring/restructuring of identities through the Circe and Proteus myth. In this theoretical framework, we will deconstruct the stories told by and regarding Elena Udrea who has been without a doubt, in the recent years, the most notorious/ most hated/ most disputed/ most contested and most appreciated woman politician in Romania. We will analyze the story told by Elena Udrea and also by others (media, supporters, opponents). We take into consideration the fact that everybody has his/her own perspective on Elena Udrea (the only feeling she has not inflicted upon people until today is indifference). We are aware that the versions of the stories are varied, like the light reflection in the mirror; however, we consider that there are some main-stories easy to dissociate. Identity, identitary construction, identitary revolution One of the key concepts of modernity, identity is of interest for the whole body of humane and social studies and can be approached from within various perspectives: sociological, psychological, philosophical, discursive, etc. Real or fictive, hidden or disclosed, identity is determined by two antagonist dimensions, i) Stability, permanence, wholeness, ii) Fluidity, metamorphosis, becoming. All identities are constituted within a system of social relations and require the reciprocal recognition of others. Identity is not to be considered a thing but rather a syste m of relations and representations the maintenance of an agents identity is a continual process of re-composition rather than a given one, in which the two constitutive dimensions of selfidentification and affirmation of difference are continually locked identity is seen as a dynamic emergent aspect of collective action. (P. Schlesinger, 1987:236-237)

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Identity is at the same time the expression of the coherence of the individual and the becoming of self facing the social events, as well as own individual events (cf. L. Vlsceanu, 2007:151). Once with the individual identity crisis, a real identitary revolution in transition is being triggered. (L.Vlsceanu, 2007:151). And, although the collective identities multiply (youth subcultures, sexual minorities subcultures or religious groups subcultures), the individual identity is dominated both by Circe and Proteus (the perpetual metamorphosis and the multiplicity of faces and masks). The individual is released increasingly from various structures; he becomes more and more autonomous and personalized; ones individual responsibility is increasingly used. His/her personal identity and social roles are less and less coherent. Briefly, each person builds subjectively his/her own identity The mechanisms of the identity construction are emotional and action-related, compensatory and promontory (L. Vlsceanu, 2007:162). The staged identity, recreated, reinvented appears (may appear) as a substitute of, a prolongation or a rupture within ones personal or social real identity. Precisely as in the famous Goffman phrase, people and moments, the various identity staging are subsumed to various circumstances; playing a role (Mrs. Udrea mopping the floors, knitting or sharing cabbage rolls, cf. infra) means to expose another identity filling in the empty spots of the first one. Its the identity projected according to the lived circumstances or to the situations provoked by the social actor. Representations and identitary projections should be planned correlative with norms, values, through some openness to negotiations and objections. In this identity construction, the role of the Other (interlocutor, witness, lecturer, viewer, etc.) is crucial. Stars and people press Media studies today are focused on the hybridizing of genres, on tabloidization of media (either print or electronic), on stardom and Celebrity Politics. In this context, its legitimate to emphasize the decisive contribution of Edgar Morin, in his fundamental writings, Les Stars and Lesprit du temps, to the founding of a research domain people information or the popularizing of politics (see the thematic issues of Herms 42 /2005, Le Temps des Mdias 10 /2008, Communication 27/2009, etc.). La notion de peopolisation politique sest en effet forge au cours des annes 2000 par un empilement de significations successives. A lapproche de llection prsidentielle franaise de 2002 elle commence par dsigner linvestissement des mdias people par les responsables politiques et leur entourage. A partir de 2003 elle exprime aussi lalignement de lensemble des mdias sur les formes et les contenus de la presse people. Enfin, compter de lanne 2005 le terme englobe non seulement les rapprochements bilatraux entre responsables politiques et personnalits du sport ou du show biz mais en outre dvoilement de la vie prive des lus sans leur accord, selon des processus de scandalisation.(Jamil Dakhlia et Marie Lherault, 2008:1). And even if the grounding studies of Morin, Les Stars and Lesprit du temps are marking the rise of the mass culture, an era when consumption takes precedent over production, the loisir value, over the work value, hedonism over Puritanism, individualism over mass community, cultural stakes over production issues (Eric Mac, 2001:238, our translation), its crucial to emphasize the permanence of the attributes of the figures we worship or deify (in Morins words, the Olympians): beauty, youth and love as well as the springing off a new collective imaginary configured slowly within the realist imaginary constituted by the mass culture. The infrastructure of the starred and humanized media, intimate and voyeuristic at the same time, is marked by the double simultaneous postulation, first towards the gods, and then towards humans, just as Morin and his exegetes have peremptorily emphasized. The incarnation of the new ideal of self the private, individual happiness is to be found in these characters Morin calls Olympians. They appear to us as life models, whose super-individualization represents the yeast of our modern individuality (E. Morin, 1962:148). Stars are humanized and people aspire to be living just like the stars: Human individuality is asserted in a movement

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where the aspiration of living comes into play on the model of gods, emulating them, if possible (Edgar Morin, 1972:34). Il sagit de personnes publiques succs (stars, reprsentants monarchiques et dirigeants politiques, champions, mannequins, artistes) dont la vie publique et prive fait en permanence la une de la presse, sur le double registre dun idal inimitable et dun modle imitable, surhumains dans le rle quils incarnent, humains dans lexistence prive quils vivent, ils accomplissent les phantasmes que ne peuvent raliser les mortels, mais appellent les mortels raliser limaginaire (E. Morin apud Eric Mac, 2001:244). These new models are subversive to the extent they oppose the old norms of social conformity to the new normality, which tends to overthrow the old models (parents, educators, national heroes, etc.) (E.Morin, 1962:146), and mass media act as promoters of the starred individualism and of serialized existence. This marketing policy of the great Hollywood enterprise has exceeded all expectations; following the Hollywood stars and royal figures of the 60ies, cohorts of sport and showbiz starts came along, and then, by the end of the century, politicians and media stars. Stardom became the quasi-natural modus operandi for numerous activities, consultants, bankers, lawyers, models, fashion designers do use this system. Not even the book industry, the records, televisions, shows, not even the world museums or the world of art cannot avoid (Franoise Banhamou, 2002, Lconomie du star system apud Jean Pierre Esquenazi, 2009:41). Generalizing the star system is correlated to the new media genre people genre, present in all forms of media (magazines, dailies, electronic media); all media are producing their own candidates to the star system (Jean Pierre Esquenazi, 2009:42) Proliferation of starred personalities also requires the presence of mega-stars (animators and producers of TV entertainment shows and segments), able to produce and ensure the continuity of the success the stars enjoys. The star system phrase considerably extended its referential field and the definition Daniel Boorstin presented us a quarter of a century ago a person who is well-known for his well-knownness has never been so timely as today. The people part of the phrase sends us to a very well delimitated reference: the most powerful persons in this world, the stars. Their main feature is visibility, emphasized, on one hand, by a powerful iconic dispositive and, on the other, through visibility-related verbs (to show, to exhibit, etc.): Through a process of turning their lives in daily events fed to the audiences happy or unhappy moments of their lives these extraordinary people we call stars (the Olympians), are turned into ordinary people. Actually, by getting into the intimacy of stars, the people press satisfies the tastes, expectations and beliefs of large portions of the heterogeneous audience, thus instituting the foundation for the people enunciating contract, based on the possibility of negotiating values within mass communication (see J. Dakhlia, 2009). Directement, par la mise en dbat du quotidien et de lintime ou indirectement par la peoplisation de la politique et des autres medias, la presse people participe aux conflits de dfinition des problmes collectifs et reprsente a ce titre une mediaculture a part entire. (Maigret et Mac 2005). Elle contribue dplacer le curseur entre sphre prive et sphre publique. Mais surtout en exaltant la part sensible de lactivit politique, elle contribue promouvoir un nouvel espace public, non plus strictement argumentatif mais au moins autant symbolique (J.Dakhlia, 2009:79). Person, character and narration in people serials The success of the French daily La Presse, founded in 1836 by Emile de Girardin can be explained by two major inventions: low subscription rate, due to advertising and preserving the interest of the reader through serialization the stories. The people media of the 20th century does nothing more than maintaining the advantage. The people press of the 20th century will keep these advantages and add the iconic component, thus instituting stardom and emotion as kings of readership. 56

The people press would stage private life (focusing on the human interest: permitted or forbidden love, breakups, life disasters presented with the help of narrative stereotypes such as suspense, follow up, shared secret). To the extent the character ensures some textual coherences based on frames, he also functions as a space of pulsional investment: the people press reader is confronted with his own impulses, since his libido sciendi (close to the sort of voyeurism underlying the pleasure of reading in general, but hyped by the breaking in stars bedrooms), libido sentiendi (the Eros & Thanatos game) and libido dominandi (allowing us to vicariously live a live which is not our own) form the structure of the people story, founded in the ambivalent star status (a person whos mundane and extraordinary, at the same time). This phenomenon, studied by so many, such as Dyer, Morin, Amossy, Esquenazi, Lits, Marion, is indicating (with the help of the elevator metaphor), towards an ascending move, due to stars inaccessibility and to the fact dreams are made to seem closer, doubled by a contrary, descending move, which is constructing proximity through resemblance (P. Marion, 2009:174, reminds us of a photograph of Zidane, in the 227th issue of Public; the star was featured, under the They are like us section, on his way to thrashing garbage). Sacredness and myth in our modern lives The need for sacred, in modern humans, finds its accomplishment in the religious-like adoration of stars and the cults resulting from it (Drgan, I., 2007, vol 2, pp.143). In his chapter La liturgie stellaire (The Stellar Liturgy, in Stars, pp.65-94), Edgar Morin reveals the mechanism through which stars are divinized and transformed in gods, in a new sort of a laic religion. The main elements of this new religion are, in authors opinion (op.cit): the relics of symbolic value distributed to fans devoting their lives to the new gods, impressive festivals, acting as rituals of consecration, organizing pilgrimages, creating fan clubs, etc. The story and the history (of individuals, groups and nations) Stories are present at all times, in all spaces, in all societies; the story and the human history were born at the same moment. After 9/11, the US experienced a narrative fever, from oral story to digital storytelling (webcams, blogs, interactive television). In the studios of the tele-reality, in the videogames, on the screens of our mobiles and computers, from bedrooms to inside cars, reality is wrapped in a narrative net which filters our perceptions and stimulates our emotions. If the great stories (grands rcits) mentioned by Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition are dead now, we remember that they are summarizing universal myths, that they are transmitting the lessons of the past to the future generations essentially moral and epistemic lessons. But theres also a opposite movement of border crossing: it brings back to the reality some fictional stories, it saturates the symbolic space with series and stories The storytelling traces behaviors and orients emotions (Christian Salmon, 2007). This modern narrative programme, so far from the parcours de la reconnaissance the one Paul Ricur discovers in the narrative, offers us narrative grammars, narrative gearings through which individuals are conducted to identify with certain models and conform to certain protocols. The stories are now the object of a permanent actualization and they have moved from institutional sites (enterprises, consultants etc.) to newspapers, webzines and blogs which represent nowadays a new contamination space. In the consumer society (you are what you buy) we dont only buy the products, but also the people and the stories they tell us.

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Women in Romanian politics Feminist scholars pointed out that, in communist Romania, women were de-feminized because the State imposed on them what was called a double burden (Marxist feminism concept apud Roventa-Frumusani, D., in Dragomir, O., 2002, p.30). The political participation of women was nothing but rhetorical. In fact, women politicians (the famous and infamous 30% women in politics quota) used to be employed in soft areas (health, education, etc.) and at the bottom of the political hierarchy. Womens position in society has practically remained the same nowadays. Only the settings and the political scene have changed from the private sector to the public one. The changes brought up by the Romanian revolution in 1989 acted in fact, not in spirit, against womens political involvement. The pro-women involvement discourse was labeled as a communist residue and any attempt to enforce a men/women balance in politics remained fruitless. As seen in the table below, the percentage of women in the Romanian parliament, even though showing a slow growth, has been throughout the entire post-communist period a low one, below 10%. Chamber Deputies women % 19901992 19921996 19962000 20002004 20042008 2008prezent 18 11 21 29 27 33 4,71 3,22 of Senate total 382 341 women % 2 5 2 10 13 10 1,56 3,20 1,29 6,13 9,28 7,29 total 128 156 154 163 140 137 Parliament women 20 16 23 39 40 43 % total

3,92 510 3,21 497 4,62 497 7,73 504 8,45 473 9,14 470

6,122 343 8,50 8,10 9,90 341 333 333

Table 1: Women in the Romanian Parliament, 1990-2012

As a comparison, in the same period, Swedens percentage of women MPs was around 37%; in Armenia 21%, in Hungary and Bulgaria 14% and in Congo 11%. This level of womens participation reached by Congo in the 90 is still a wishful thinking for 2012 European Romania. The patriarchal discourse, coming so natural to the majority of this country, is still prevailing over the modern one; the latter was left for official meetings at a European level and did not produce any real, important effects. This situation is explained by Lucian Boia (2005, p.336) in imagological terms. For the mentioned scholar, women may certainly be admitted in the political sphere and may be included in (political) mythology, only in their designated place, in marginal positions, as witnesses and moral support of the great male undertakings. In Romanian politics, women are allowed in the narrow limits of the ideal female depicted by society: silent, competent, forgiving, conciliating, submissive. Women must play their role gracefully, and leave the scene when they are no longer needed; and here, the confinement is: do not overshadow the male leader. Also, one can say that womens presence in the top hierarchy is strictly banned. Crossing the unwritten interdiction would immediately earn women the wicked or evil label. In the last 58

century, only a few women refused to obey. Among them, the Evil triad has to be mentioned: Elena Lupescu, the reason for Carol IInd abdication (his mistress) Ana Pauker, double harmed (because of her foreign ethnic origin) the image of the proto-communist party; and last but not least, Elena Ceausescu, the evil half of the presidential couple, and the main reason for Nicolae Ceausescus alienation. The scholars (Boia, L,. op.cit., p.335; Enache R., in Teodorescu, B., Gutu, D., Enache, R., p.185; Stefanel, A., in Roventa-Frumusani, D., ed., 2010) identified the following typology of women in Romanian politics: the mistress or the wicked wife; the missing women; the martyr; the non-political woman; the Western-style of the political woman; and the successor. The following section will present those categories relevant for our study. It will be argued that Elena Udrea tried to impose the image of a Western-style political woman, even though the stories about her converge to the mistress or the wicked wife image. The first one, the mistress or the wicked wife is the most striking one. The public, the media and the politicians cast in this role any woman with a certain influence, by (re)shaping reality in order to fit the story in which all evil in the public space have a female behind it. Over the last 20 years, this role has also been played by: Corina Cretu (to Ion Iliescu); Zoe Petre (also evil/over protective mother), Dana Nastase (behind husband prime minister Adrian Nastase), etc. In what concerns Traian Basescu, president for two mandates and vividly disputed, on the brinks of being overthrown or demise, in the summer of 2012, this part was brilliantly played by Elena Udrea, our main focus in this paper. As such, she can be labeled as Western-style political woman. This kind of woman is charming without being frivolous, having authority without virility, and being representative without losing her own identity. The main threat for the women in this typology is the possible glide into the first pattern, the mistress or the wicked wife. This type of woman is the one who did not resign from her womanhood, but used it in order to reach her political goals. A possible inversion to the commonplace saying behind every successful man, there is a powerful woman would be behind every successful woman there is a powerful man. Under the given typology, such an allusion can transform these women into mistresses, implying a sexual exchange where there can be none. In the mediated Romanian politics, women are not only less visible than men, but also treated by different standards. For a man, the Procustean bed is the expertise; for women the essentials lay in the family status and attractiveness. For the young ones, there are romance stories to be told, while the older ones must settle with the cast of the evil witches or reject their womanhood. Elena Udrea: brief presentation of her political carrier Elena Udrea began her public political activity in 2005, when she was a state counselor and a head of the Presidential Office under President Traian Basescu. During this period, she launched a series of attacks on Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu. She first got medias attention by speaking, during a televised interview, of the President of Norway (in fact a monarchy) and with her pink, tight gowns, glamorous necklaces and expensive designer bags. After a short while, Elena Udrea resigned from her position, mentioning the profoundly unjust attacks on her and others involved in Bsescu's anti-corruption project, and her desire not to become a burden for her superior. Moreover, she was characterized as the blonde from Golden Blitz a restaurant once frequented by Bsescu, whose owners had business ties with Udrea's husband having been photographed there with the elected President Bsescu in 2004. Despite rumors that stated the contrary, she affirmed in an interview that her relationship with Traian Basescu is strictly professional. Following her resignation, Udrea continued to act as a presidential surrogate, soon afterwards accusing the prime minister of placing a call to a prosecutor on behalf of his friend and business partner Dinu Patriciu. She returned to this subject in 2007, when she alleged that Triceanu had written the president a note asking for the latter's intervention in the case. 59

At the last parliamentarian election, Elena Udrea became an MP. Three days after the legislative session opened, she was sworn in to the new office as a Minister of Tourism. In December, a new cabinet, led by Emil Boc, came into office; there, Elena Udrea presented the Regional Development and Tourism portfolio. Along with the rest of the cabinet, she resigned in February 2012. In July 2010, she became interim head of the Bucharest Democrat Liberal Party; she took the position on a permanent basis later that year, when she was the only candidate to fill it. She resigned this position in 2012, after PD-Ls catastrophic election results. Elena Udrea is known to the public for her expensive wardrobe. Media often talks about her branded shoes and purses. In August 2011, she generated controversy when she wore a dress that some media outlets claimed to have costed 14,310. The Imagological Axis of Elena Udreas image Elena Udreas image in her own words, as well as in other stories told about her can be analyzed by deconstruction, using the following Cartesian system:

Figure 1. The imagological axis of Elena Udreas image

As pointed out earlier, women in Romanian politics are subject to a tension between the feminine and the masculine. When the emphasis is put on their feminine side, this would actually expel them from the decision-making political sphere. In opposition, when emphasis is put on masculinity, they are ridiculed and seen as underdeveloped men. There are two main access points for women in the public spectrum: hypersexualization and professionalization which are put in tension one towards the other and cannot co-exist in the same story. a. The Hypersexualization female From the early beginnings of her public carrier, Elena Udrea took advantage of this dimension and presented herself as a beautiful/desirable woman, confident of her sexuality. She often appeared in shots for glossy magazines, dressed to seduce, with colorful and provocative clothes. People labeled her as the Golden Blitz blonde, the presidential blonde; the pink eminence, etc. Even if she is married to an important Romanian businessman (almost never seen around her) her relationship with Traian Basescu is taken for granted in the mediated-politics, a relation that is believed to have crossed the line of fair professional cooperation. All this underline and shape the model of the mistress. She is seen (mostly by her opponents but also, in innuendoes, by her colleagues) as a younger, sexier version of Elena Ceausescu with all the evil influence of the latter. 60

b. Professionalization - female To minimize the image of a fame-fatale and to become more eligible in the eyes of a patriarchal electorate, during the parliamentarian campaign, she presented herself in a manner closer to the ideal woman: she sewed, she cleaned the floor with a mop; she even cooked cabbage rolls and talked about the Christmas cake (cozonac) she baked for her family and about her desire of having a child. All these, in front of the cameras (TV or photo). Once released, the story shapes a life of its own. Her attempt to impose her story was reshaped and became a weapon used against her by her opponents and by the public. The first ones made jokes and have thrown the subject into the ridiculous. In January 2012, during the street protests, on a protest board could be read, Elena Udrea, back to the kitchen. When one wants to emphasize the public exit of a man, jail is evoked; for a woman, the symbol is rather the kitchen. c. Hypersexualization - male This category refers to the lesser used dimension of her image but, since it is a part of the semiotic square drawn above and it also relates to the image Elena Udrea herself projects outwards, consciously, we decided to use it. There has only been one shooting-session of her; the pictures appeared on her blog and in a local paper and did not make it to other media. The outfit is very masculine, the make-up almost unnoticeable, the hair scattered, the gun (symbol of subliminal masculinity) reveal another image of Elena Udrea. Sexualized, but masculine. d. Professionalization - male After the nomination as a Minister of Tourism, Elena Udrea started to tell another story, in which she presented herself as a good professional, with manly behavior. Sexy outfits were replaced by serious ones; glamorous necklaces and her heavy makeup have vanished. She started talking about her carrier-choices ranging from military doctor, to construction engineer and lawyer. At a discursive level, both opponents and supporters refer to her in masculine terms: politician, power, corruption. During the 2009 presidential electoral campaign. Traian Basescu spoke of her using male language marks (untranslatable, due to the Romanian term, om, which designates a person or a man, according to the context): a very active and very efficient person/man (un om); an efficient minister (un ministru); a loyal person/man (un om loial), etc. Even if, lately, she emphasized this aspect, related to her image, there is a contagion of this dimension with the opposite one (hypersexualization female): the Prime Minister kisses her hand in a political meeting and she is greeted with flowers in her official meetings or workvisits (remains of a patriarchal era, a sort of positive discrimination to women seen only in their feminine capacity). In a very important political party gathering out in the country, a town mayor confessed that he sleeps with her picture under his pillow. Also, the External Affairs (Exterior) minister mentioned, in a public media-covered event, that he finds it hard to focus when he is around her. Conclusions Loved and hated with equal intensity, Elena Udrea is a model of a politician which can be imposing in Romanian politics, at any level, crossing political-party limits and cannibalizing other models. The stories she tells are the object of a permanent actualization and constant modification of shape in order to fit in (Proteus). In the same manner stories that others tell about her have the power of re-shaping her public imagine, undermining her own efforts (Circe). As a woman politician, Elena Udrea is constantly the subject of the media: good press or bad press, in quality or tabloid newspapers or TV shows, she has to find the strengths to reinvent, re-present herself, in a constant transformation, grasped by the media, as a perpetual effort of defining herself. In the eyes of the people press audiences, Elena Udrea is the perfect star: she offers enough fodder for each taste, each interest, each gaze. Shes a woman, a politician. 61

Bibliography
Boia, Lucian. (2005) Myth and History in Romanian Consciousness (Istorie si mit in constiinta romaneasca). Bucuresti: Humanitas Borlandi, Massimo, Boudon, Raymond, Cherkaoui, Mohamed, Valade Bernard. (2009) Dicionar al gndiririi sociologice. Iai: Polirom Charaudeau & Maingueneau. (2002) Dictionnaire de lanalyse du discourse. Paris: Seuil Dakhlia, Jamil, Lherault, Marie, 2008 (dir.) Le Temps des Mdias 10, dossier Peopolisation et politique Dakhlia, Jamil, Lherault, Marie. (2008) Prsentation.Peopolisation et politique, in Le Temps des Mdias no. 10 Dakhlia, Jamil. (2009) Du populaire au populisme ? idologie et ngociation des valeurs dans la presse people franaise, in Communication, 27, vol. 1, pp. 66-84 Dubied, Annik. (2009) Linformation-people, entre rhtorique du cas particulier et rcits dintimit, in Communication, 27, vol. 1, pp. 54-66 Durand, Pascal, Lits, Marc. (2005) Introduction. Peuple, populaire, populisme in Herms 42, pp. 11-15 Esquenazi, Jean-Pierre. (2009) Du star system au people: lextension dune logique conomique in Communication vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 37-54 Lits, Marc, 2001 Personne prive, personnage public. Mdiatisation et thique, in Communication 20, vol. 2, pp. 9-24 Lits, Marc. (2009) La construction du personnage dans la presse people, in Communication vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 124-139 Mac, Eric. (2001) Elments dune sociologie contemporaine de la culture de masse. A partir dune relecture de lEsprit du temps dEdgar Morin, in Herms 31, pp. 235-257 Marion, Philippe. (2005) De la presse people au populaire mdiatique, in Hermes 42, pp. 119-125 Morin, Edgar. (1957) Les Stars, Paris: Editions du Seuil, Coll. Points. (translated in Romanian at Meridiane Publishing House, in 1977) Morin, Edgar. (1962) Lesprit du temps. Essai sur la culture de masse, Paris, Editions Grasset Morley David, Robins Kevin. (1995) Spaces of Identity. Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. London and New York: Routledge Roventa-Frumusani, Daniela. (2011) Discursive Hypostases (Ipostaze discursive). Bucuresti: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti Salmon Christian. (2008) Storytelling, la machine fabriquer des histoires et formater les esprits. Paris: La Dcouverte Schlesinger, Peter. (1987) On national identity: some conceptions and misconceptions criticized, Social Science Information, 26 (2), pp. 219-264 Teodorescu, Bogdan, Gutu, Dorina, Enache, Radu. (2005) The best for all the possible worlds. Political Marketing in Romania between 1990-2005 (Cea mai buna dintre lumile posibile. Marketingul politic in Romania 1990-2005). Bucuresti: Comunicare.ro Vlsceanu Lazr. (2007) Sociologie i modernitate. Iasi: Polirom

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Hallyu in Romania Understanding East-Asia fictions in Romania7

Valentina Marinescu University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania Hanryu or Hallyru (in English The Korean wave) is an Asian specific phenomenon and it refers to the present impact of the Korean folk culture products (movies, music, video or computer games, fashion) on this region of the world (Dator and Seo, 2004; Endo and Matsumoto, 2004; Seo, 2005). For the Romanian society, the national exposure to products belonging to Hallyru folk culture is a very recent phenomenon which began in the summer of 2009, when the main channel of the public television service (TVR1) broadcast the first K-drama: The Jewel of the Palace (Daejanggeum). In three year (2009-2010) there were other thirteen-five Korean historical series, also distributed in prime-time by the public television, one of the main reasons of such editorial decision being the audience growth for the respective TV channel during the entire broadcasting period. In non-Asian spaces, the impact of such cultural industry type on consumers was connected to the way in which Hallyru was perceived especially inside large Asian communities residing in USA and less in Western Europe (Chan, Ma, 1996; Keane, 2006; Cunningham, Jacka, 1996). The present article analyzes the reception of such series in Romania, including the reasons that determined the orientation of a certain part of the public towards the consumption of cultural products relatively unknown for them before. The main objectives of the present study are: 1. What is the influence exerted by these Korean historical series on the Romanian peoples perception in general and more precisely on their perceptions about Asia? 2. Which are the reasons that could explain the popularity of such products among Romanian audiences? In order to achieve these objectives, this research project will consist of the analysis of a set of interviews with the Romanian viewers of this type of series. Due to reasons of methodological validity, the data from the interviews are triangulated with a discourse analysis of certain discussions on the topic of these series on three Romanian internet forums devoted to Asian movies and culture. General theoretical framework According to the studies devoted to Hallyu phenomenon (Montira Tada-amnuaychai, 2006), the expansion of the Korean folk culture had two distinctive stages: the period before the year 2000 (The First Korean Wave) and after this date (The Second Korean Wave). If in the case of the first stage, Korea exported especially movies and television series in various countries, the untimely success of the Korean folk culture is based on the combination between the cultural mix and the use of the newly emerged economic opportunities particularly the access to the digital scope (Internet) -Cho Hae-Joang, 2005. In Romania the visible impact of The New Korean Wave is the one generated by the broadcasting of Korean historical TV series. Regarding Korean cultural products for television, we can notice the difference between two large series types: the so-called romantic comedies similar with soap operas and Latin American TV series and historical dramas or sageukdramas (Chua B. H., 2006). A particular TV genre, sageuk series have as main characteristic the narrative mix (at the level of the series script) of real historical facts (existing in historical recordings) and
7

The research project at the basis of the present article was made with the help of the Academy of Korean Studiess fellowship (July-September 2011).

63

elements belonging to the legend and tale sphere (without any real origin substratum). Having as starting point historical data and documents existing in the archives8 this mix of reality and fiction ensures a higher degree of adaptability for the narrative type to its transposition into a filmed material for the TV screen9. Sageuk series from the period of the First Korean Wave (the 80s-90s time interval) were based exclusively on historical data, this being considered as The Golden Age of this genre10. In spite of all these, the genre in itself entered into a deep crisis period at the end of the First Korean Wave, the main proof being the extremely low ratings for this type of productions in the origin country. The change took place in 1999 when director Lee Byung Hoon together with the scriptwriter Choi Wan Gyu made the TV series that would change for good Sageuk genre: Hur Jun. In Lees opinion, the biggest problem of Sageuk genre in that period was the inability of attracting a significant proportion of younger audience (10 20 years old), a growing number of Korean TV stations viewers belonging to this age segment11. For the Hur Jun series, Lee focused not necessarily on the historical events but particularly on the characters, following the heros life from his early humble years until his successful period as the kings doctor during Joseon dynasty. The result was achieving a national audience of over 60% and the appearance of a new sub-genre, the so-called fusion-sageuk, more precisely a narrative combination of historical elements certified by documents and modern elements referring to emotions and sensitivity. The next impressive success in terms of audience growth was Daejanggeum12 series. The story of the first medicine-woman during Joseon dynasty, combined medical narrative threads (like in Hur Jun series) with the sumptuous presentation of the royal cuisine of those times, transforming into a real Asian or even worldwide cultural phenomenon (the TV series registered spectacular ratings in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan). What are the ingredients of success in the case of these Korean products, namely sageuk dramas? At a first glance, we could say that in spite of all the disadvantages that Korea might face in terms of language barrier and cultural visibility level (especially when compared to North-American cultural productions) its media products managed to turn the use of polyvalent cultural elements and the attentively articulated content into advantages. The cultural value of these products is multidimensional so that it doesnt strictly reside at the language level known by the public or by just part of it (Cunningham and Sinclair, 2001). Regarding the content, the appeal to general common values allows cultural assimilation among Asian audiences, reducing thus the danger of cultural opposition or rejection. Moreover, standardization and specialization are necessary for such products in order to be able to reach global audiences13. The articles in the specialty literature referring to the impact of Korean folk culture products on East-European consumers are almost non-existing at present. Most of the studies that took an interest in the impact of such cultural products on external audiences were made on
8

In this case it is about the so-called Archives of the Joseon dynasty that cover the Korean history for 500 years. Nowadays, people are working to digitalize the archive, available on: http://sillok.history.go.kr/main/main.jsp. 9 Another reason for this change was connected to the huge amount of work in the case of an attentive study of the official historical documents existing in Korea. The so-called Annals of Joseon dynasty which lay at the basis of most Korean historical dramas totaled hundreds of volumes written mostly in Chinese letters ("Hanja"), and this could have been the equivalent of a titanic work of translating and adapting into the modern Korean language. 10 This is the period in which are made and broadcast Korean series that are extremely long, of hundreds of episodes, such as: 500 Years of Joseon dynasty (a series of more than 800 episodes, divided in its turn into 11 distinctive series), Han Myung Hwi, Jang Nok Soo, Tears of the Dragon, King of the Wind, Im Ggeok Jung. 11 The Korean TV stations making and programming historical series were confronted at the end of the 90s with an unexpected competition from the romantic dramas that were emphasizing a script adapted for young people and starring many attractive actors. 12 Daejanggeumwas the first sageuk drama in Romania in 2009. 13 Of course, regarding Asian markets and their aspects, we could add some economic factors as well. Thus, in Japan the distribution costs for the American movies are high enough, although there is a big demand for successful movies (blockbusters) similar to Hollywood productions.

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societies situated in the proximity of Korea (Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, China) or on diasporas placed in various geographical areas (USA, Western Europe). Thats why we considered that an exploring study on this topic could offer a series of answers related to consumption reasons and the impact of this type of cultural products on a remote society in terms of space and culture, completely different from the medium these products were initially conceived and produced in. Data set, research variables and hypotheses The methodology used in the case of this article consists of triangulating the research methods applied at the level of the same data set. From a strictly methodological point of view, we chose the interview, the discourse analysis and the virtual ethnography. We thus started from the fundamental assumption according to which the discourse analysis is a method that helped us identify the manner to reconstruct social identity through the intermediate of language in the direction indicated by Sweeney (2003) and Sancho (2003). We chose the interview, the meaning of such research method in communication being that of a (Asa Berger, 2000: 111): ...conversation- interaction between a researcher (somebody/ a person who wishes to obtain some information) and an informer (somebody/ a person who probably holds all the important information, necessary to find the answer to our research topic). Out of the diversity of interview types we selected the semi-structured interview (Asa Berger, 2000: 111-112), a case in which we considered that there could be an average level of control over the interviewing situation. The reason for such a choice derived from the fundamental characteristic associated to this type of interview: the researcher is interested in studying in more depth a certain given domain or in identifying the stages in the evolution of an already known domain, through the intermediate of a list of questions. The researchers role this time is to propose specific discussion topics which are not freely approached, not spontaneously but rather in a conducted way, following a pre-established logic. The projected sample made during the research project is an inductive one (Crabtree, Miller 1992: 41). To be more precise, the sampling scheme used in the research project had a purpose and its main characteristic, according to the specialty literature (Black, 1999: 118), was that it allowed a selection of the subjects according to their belonging to a certain social group: the audience of the Korean series broadcast by the public national television station (TVR1). The volume of the studied sample was of twenty-five interviews made on the basis of a semi-structured interview guide. The second analysis method used was a discourse one applied to certain discussions related to these series on three Romanian internet forums devoted to Asian14 movies and culture We thus had as starting point Faircloughs theory (2001) in which the use of language is related to power and ideology and we considered that language is not only a social product but also an evolution process (Fairclough, 2001). Data analysis On the 19th January 2011, the evening news-hour at the second channel of the Romanian National Television (TVR2) hosted a debate about the popularity of Korean TV-series in Romania. The movie is more important than life!(Filmul bate viata!) was written on the screen when the anchormen asked the opinion of an important Romanian movie-critic Irina Margareta
14

The three analyzed forums were: Asian film-fan forum (http://seriale-coreene.forumgratuit.ro/index.htm); Korean series forum (http://seriale-coreene.forumgratuit.ro/index.htm) and Septokcoreea forum (http://steptokorea.webs.com/). Due to reasons related to research ethics, the forums will be named in the text through the intermediate of several codes as follows: code 1 Asian film-fan forum; code 2 Korean Series forum; code 3 - Septokcoreea forum.

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Nistor about the reasons behind this mass phenomena and the discussion was illustrated in background with images from (on-going at that time) Jumong TV-series. The main reasons invoked by the expert in the favor of K-dramas success were: the series follow a general prescription in order to fit the tastes of a Western public, there is an obvious exotic character of the TV-series which satisfies the need for new and un-usual in the case of a certain TV-audiences and there is a valuable school of cinematography in South Korea (Kim Ki Duk was invoked as an example in the debate) that has its life apart from the products of popular culture such is the case with TV series. During the last three years there was, also, a Romanian printed press (newspapers and magazines) large coverage of the success recorded by the Korean television series in Romania. In the case of Romanian media coverage of the Korean television series the stress was put, as in the televised debates case, on the exotic character of those cultural products and, on the other hand, on their obvious artistic quality. The problem of the fit between the audiences expectations and values and the Korean television series appeal at this set of values was not taken into consideration. The sets of interviews made in 2010-2011 revealed that the members of the Korean TVseries audience assessed as their main values: 1. Wisdom (Mature understanding of life): 10.7%; 2. Security of the family: 10%; 3. True friendship and Freedom (Independence): 6.7% each 4. Peace in the world, Happiness and Peace in the world: 6% each. The general value decoding procedures for Korean TV series indicated, as such, the fact that the subjects we interviewed had found in the Korean series an axiological substratum close or even similar to the personal one (e.g. the values stressed as important in the abovementioned Figure 1). Thus, the respondents pointed towards the existence at the level of the Korean series script of certain values belonging to a common spiritual family with those contained in the Korean television series they watched: Virtue, Honesty, the love feeling, Integrity, Respect, Loyalty etc. This similarity between personal values and those delivered by the television series is to be found also in the analyzed online discussions at the Romanian Internet forums devoted to Korean movies and series. The participants at the virtual dialogues emphasized the return to certain personal values and interest topics present in the historical series viewed by them: Love, Respect, Wisdom, Importance of the family etc. According to the answers registered in the interviews set and during the online discussions on forums devoted to these TV series, the defining attributes for the Korean folk culture products broadcast by the Romanian television could be the historical character, the complexity and the surprising, the unexpected (the last open with the meaning different from what one could have initially assumed). We find this stress put on the combination between the unexpected or/and surprising natural landscape and the appeal to perennial cultural elements (belonging to the specific history) as the main characteristic emphasized by the participants to the analyzed online dialogues: When asked about the main traits of the Korean television series the interviews offered the following: mainly with a fast action (23.3%), neither dense nor light as plot (30%); intense (23.3%); presenting an unique genre (16.7%), with a rather complex script (23.3%); neither with violent actions nor with non-violent ones (23.3%) ; with a traditional theme (43.3%); being obviously full of significance (23.3%) and with a truthful story-line (20%). According to the same sets of interviews and forums discussions, the informational dimension represented the most important axis along which the motivation for watching Korean television series broadcast by the Romanian national television got structured. More precisely, the interviews set indicated some knowledge contribution related to this cultural-geographic space. The overwhelming majority of the respondents stated that, when initially viewing the first episode of these TV dramas, they possessed a minimum level of knowledge about the Asian culture, history and civilization. Those general informing function as well as the educational 66

function exerted by the media in the case of the Korean historical TV series was, also, obvious for the people participating at the discussions on the Internet forums devoted to these series. Conclusions Referring to modern cultural identity as an essential element in the construction of social identity (for individuals and groups), St. Hall shows that (Hall, 1990: 225): Cultural identity, in this sense, is a matter of becoming as well as of being. It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, they have histories. But, like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essential past, they are subjects of the continuous play of history, culture and power. In the case of our study, the analysis of empirical data demonstrated that the main element laying at the basis of the Romanian publics reasons for watching Korean series was the value one. Thus, not only the respondents from the interviewed sample but also the discourse analysis made on discussion forums devoted to these series came up with a common set of personal values in the axiological and thematic constellation of sageuk dramas watched by the public. Belonging especially to a spiritual register, they classify the audience of these series according to a specific typology which we can call a Balanced-normative one. At a narrative level, the Korean TV series tell a story with a unique character, their script being interpreted by the audience as a blend of exotic tinges (the unexpected, surprising nature for the members of the public) and the use of value insertions belonging to a general human cultural background. We are thus witnessing an illustration of glocalization for these cultural products, a fact underlined by further analyses devoted to this phenomenon (Chan, J. M., Ma, E. K. w., 1996; Cho H. J., 2005; Dator, J., Y. Seo, 2004). It is thus becoming obvious that the analysis of the way in which sageuk series are received by the Romanian public confirms the thesis according to which (Eun-Young Jung, 2009): Popular cultural products and cultural consumption in the twenty-first century have become increasingly transnational as hybrid national, cultural and ethnic boundaries around the globe become less clearly defined. The stories told by the script of the sageuk dramas were read by the Romanian public as a narrative in which there was a mix of Korean unique cultural values and a set of universal values, this ensuring a global reach for the Korean series. We have thus witnessed the confirmation of the validity of the uses and gratifications theory associated to media messages consumption (McQuail, 1993: 73). Given the lack of general, cultural and historical information through which the public could be in the position to contextualize the consumed cultural products (Korean series) we can say that in this specific case, we are witnessing the practical validation of Liebes and Katzs theories (Katz, Liebes 1985: 188; Katz, Liebes 1986; Katz, Liebes 1988) referring to the cultural motivations involved in the media consumption. Our analysis opened the way towards new questions related to the appearance of a new cultural identity in the case of postmodern audiences (Eun-Young Jung, 2009), in which the hybrid cultural products consumption (Korean exported cultural products) is brought along not only by new consumption motivations (polyvalent) but also by new abilities to decode (derived especially from the mix of media genres made possible through the technological and digital process). If we agree to St. Hall (1996, 617) that modern nations are all cultural hybrids we can conclude that the success of Korean cultural products is based on their glocalization. 67

Accepting the hybrid character of this type of cultural products could help us to understand better the authenticity, as well as the cultural and social purity terms.
Bibliography Arkardvipart, M., Jongjid, N., Suksawat-amnuay, S., (2009). The Influence of Korean Drama Series on Travel Intention of Thai Tourist on Choosing South Korea as a Travel Destination, Ed. Naresuan University, Phitsanulok. Chan, J. M., Ma, E. K. w. (1996). Asian television: Global trends and local processes, in Gazette, 58(1): 45-60. Cho H. J., (2005). Reading the Korean Wave as a Sign of Global Shift, in Korea Journal, 45(4): 147-182. Choi, J. H., (2010). The South Korean Film Renaissance. Local Hitmakers, Global Provocateurs, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Choi, Y.M., (2004). An Application of Critical Media Theories to the Korean Wave in the East Asia, n Communication & Methodology, paper available at: http://amrc.cuc.edu.cn/data/upload/download/PDF/04/04-18.pdf Chua B. H., (2006). East Asian pop culture: consumer communities and politics of the national, paper available at: http://www.asiafuture.org/english/04material/04mate3.html. Cunningham, S., Jacka, E. (1996). The role of television in Australias paradigm shift to Asia Media, in Culture & Society, 18 (4): 619-637. Dator, J., Seo, Y., (2004). Korea as the Wave of a Future: The Emerging Dream Society of Icons and Aesthetic Experience, in Journal of Futures Studies, 9 (1): 3144. Denzin, N. (2006). Sociological Methods: A Sourcebook. Aldine Transaction Endo, F., Matsumoto, A., (2004). Currents: TV Dramas Melt Hearts, Thaw Japan - ROK Relations, in The Daily Yomiuri, 5 December: 1 Eun-Young Jung (2009). Transnational Korea: A Critical Assessment of the Korean Wave in Asia and the United States, in Southeast Review of Asian Studies, Volume 31 (2009): 6980. Fairclough, N., (2003). Media Discourse, London: Edward Arnold. Hall, St., (1990). Cultural identity and diaspora, in Rutherford J. (ed.). Identity: Community, culture, difference, London: Lawrence and Wishart: 22237. Hine, C., (2000). Virtual Etnography, London and New York, Sage Pbl. Hjorth, L., (2008). Cybercute Politics. The Internet Cyworld and Gender Performativity in Korea in Youna Kim (ed.) Media Consumption and Everyday Life in Asia, Routlege, New York,. Katz, E., Liebes, T., (1984). Once Upon a Time in Dallas, in Intermedia 12(3): 28-32 Katz, E., Liebes, T., (1985). Mutual Aid in the Decoding of Dallas: Preliminary Notes from a Cross-Cultural Study, in Drummond, Ph., Patterson, R., (eds.), Television in Transition. London: British Film Institute: 187-198 Katz, E., Liebes, T., (1986). Patterns of Involvement in Television Fiction: A Comparative Analysis, in European Journal of Communication, 1(2): 151-71. Keane, M. (2006). Once were peripheral: Creating media capacity in East Asia, in Media, Culture & Society, 28(6): 835-855. Keehyeung Lee, (2008). Mapping Out the Cultural Politics of the Korean Wave in Contemporary South Korea, in Chua Beng Huat, Koichi Iwabuchi (eds.), East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong. Kim, Y., (ed.), (2008). East Asian Pop Culture. Layers of Communities n Media Consumption and Everyday Life In Asia, Ed. Routlege, New York, Liebes, T., Katz, E., (1989). On the Critical Abilities of Television Viewers, in BoydBarrett, O., Newbold, Ch., (eds.) (1995): Approaches to Media: A Reader. London: Arnold: 204-222 Loving Korea (2010), available at: http://blog.naver.com/PostView.nhn?blogId=igettheworld&logNo=10011083871 1

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McQuail, D., (1993). Mass Communication Theory, Sage Publications, London, Newbury Park, Beverly Hills, New Delhi; Metaveevinij, V., (2008). Key success factors of Korean TV industry structure that leads to popularity of Korean TV dramas in a global market in Journal of East Asian Studies, Thammasat University, Thailand. Montira Tada-amnuaychai (2006). Korean Media Industry and Its Cultural Marketing Strategy of K-pop, Asia Culture Forum, available at: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/24971170/Korean-Media-Industry-and-ItsCultural-Marketing-Strategy-of-K-pop-Ebook Morikawa, K., (2008). Korean dramas carve a niche in Japan in Jimoondang, Gyeonggy-Do (ed.) Korean Wave, Korea Herald. Pleu, A., (2009) Altfel de televiziune, in Adevrul, 19 August 2009, available at: http://www.adevarul.ro/financiar/Altfel-televiziune_0_100790020.html Ravina, M., (2009). Introduction: Conceptualizing the Korean Wave, in Southeast Review of Asian Studies, vol. 31, Editor Steven E. Gump, SUA. Russell, M. J., (2008). Pop goes Korea: behind the revolution in movies, music and Internet culture, Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley. Ryoo, W., (2008). The Political Economy of the Global Mediascape: the case of the South Korean Film Industry, in Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 30(6), Sage Publications, Los Angeles, Londra, New Delhi, Singapore. Sancho G., Paniagua, B., Lopez Garcia, J.M., Cremades, P., Serra Alegre, E., (eds.) (2007). Critical Discourse Analysis of Media Texts. Universitat de Valencia. Shim, D., (2006). Hybridity and the rise of Korean popular culture in Asia in Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 28(1), Sage Publications, Los Angeles, Londra, New Delhi, Singapore. Shim, D., (2008). The Growth of Korean Cultural Industries and the Korean Wave in Chua Beng Huat (ed.) East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2008 Sweeney, M., (2003). Living to Read True Crime: Theorizations from Prison, in Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture. 25.1-2 (Winter/Spring 2003): 55-89. Yoo Soh-jung (2010). Hallyu faces turning point, in The Korea Herald, 15 April 2010, available at: http://www.koreaherald.com/entertainment/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20100415000 637 You Hong-june (2006). The Origin and Future of Hallyu, available at: www.koreafocus.or.kr/. Youna Kim (2008). East Asian Pop Culture. Layers of Communities in Media Consumption and Everyday Life In Asia, Ed. Routlege, New York. Young-Mook Choi (2004). An Application of Critical Media Theories to the Korean Wave in the East Asia, available at: http://amrc.cuc.edu.cn/data/upload/download/PDF/04/04-18.pdf

69

The making-up of the stars public life

Silvia Branea - University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

Nowadays, media is considered to have an essential role in the social construction of the reality. This point of view is more often found in the discussions/debates regarding the political journalism, but also when we ask ourselves the following question: how do certain public figures/stars manage to influence the public opinions both in their domain and in others, too? This particular question is accompanied by other queries, too, which are related to the aspects/fragments that a stars public life puzzle is built on. Which one of these fragments/aspects makes him/her so notorious that he/she is able to persuade people to donate money for the children in Africa or to no longer discriminate? One of the possible explanations comes from the authors preoccupied with the globalization issue. If we build global idols, we end up tryin g to unify points of view from different parts of the world and even (according to some researchers) to transmit a standard vision according to a set of values suggested by MTV and Hollywood stars. In Giddens point of view (2000, p. 64), the globalization can be defined as the enhancement of social relationships on a global level, and this enhancement connects distant towns in such a way that the local events are shaped at a great distance and vice-versa. The result of this process is not always a series of general changes going in the same direction, but, many times, it consists of tendencies opposing each other. Communication globalization The special element occurring when communication is globalised is that, no matter which media channel is used to transmit the messages closer or farther from the place where they are produced it can happen that their transmission is simultaneous in several places in the world. For instance, the teenagers in Bucharest or in Seul will be able to watch a royal wedding in Europe at the same time and the event could have a certain meaning for their socialization. Globalization can be considered in the terms of world occidentalization (Tomlinson, p. 129). World occidentalization could mean the spread of European languages (English in particular) and cultural consumerism. This process implies other elements, too: exporting clothing styles, habits of cultural consumption dominated by media, transmitting a wide range of values and attitudes regarding the personal freedom, gender and sexuality, human rights, religion and so on. R. Cohen and P. Kennedi argue that the world infusion of the occidental model (American) is combined with local traditions and a polychrome hybridization emerges, not a grey standardization, a world monoculture (apud Ilu, 2001, p. 58). The occidental model is adopted creatively in different countries which did not manage to pass through all or some of the stages of modernity construction. In the context of synchronization to modernity/post modernity/hypermodernity, the question arises on how the countries with a communist past will manage to get to the process of convergence of old and new media. In 1999, Sonia Livingstone launched the expression media environment trying to integrate in the same conceptual scheme older and newer media and to find both the continuities and tensions resulting from their competition (Livingstone, 1999, p. 22). The expression media environment launched by the British author is relevant even more as its individual arrangement implies using extremely customized media supports, both in case of film consumption and music consumption and/or games: audio cassettes, video cassettes, cds, DVDs and so on. The dominating tendency in the case of old media is to use the Internet network as a support to rebroadcast or broadcast simultaneously radio or television shows, allowing thus an 70

increase in the number of listeners and possible viewers (Barbier, Bertho-Lavenir, p. 334). Moreover, the radio stations and the television channels develop games websites, websites to discuss with the radio listeners or television viewers, to promote future shows, to make a loyal public and establish the preferences and consumption habits. Universal stars? Generally, the media show is centered around the cult of celebrity which supports the dominant role of models and symbols, idols concerning the fashion, appearance and personality. In showbiz, celebrity extends to any major social area, from entertainment to politics, sports and business. There is an extremely developed industry of public relations which takes care of certain persons and makes them famous protecting their positive image in the endless fights for image. In this area, there is always the danger that the star could become a prey to the hazardous negative image and lose its status or become a negative figure (Kellner, 2003, p. 5). Some of the theories circulated in the last decade can fall into the tendency of considering media to have an essential role in the social construction of the reality. This point of view is based on the idea that the influence can work more efficiently if an indirect path is used, thus appealing to controlling the informational environment of the individual. Media can contribute to shaping the reality by drawing the public attention on some stakes (themes), statements or facts that the public can use as criteria to evaluate the politicians actions, programs and speeches (priming effect). Another effect is the classification: media has a significant role in establishing the frame of reference of the events and statements because they are inserted in a specific context (Derville, pag. 95-96). For Kellner, the social construction of the reality is partly generated by the symbolical interaction between the life experience and the closeness of media culture. This is a dialectic process which enables the personal experience to be mediated, uttered and focused by the cultural media, but it also includes interpretations and media uses which are built by individuals in real life situations. The appropriation of different portrayals to the audience and the use of the media material depend on gender, race, class and ideological perspectives (Kellner, 2003, p. 103). Media brings forward models of thought and action socially valued, especially with fun programs (concerts and sports broadcasts, fiction series, shows on stars life); depending on these models, the individuals are able to found and revise their own identity with slight adaptations, or in other words, to reevaluate their self-esteem. Critical multiculturalism is one of the rare visions which allow the merge of the studies on informational media with the studies on entertainment media. The two referential areas are usually separated and sometimes the entertainment media is undervalued in comparison with the informational media. The wide range of social speeches which are competing are at a certain point articulated in the media culture which in its turn is based on the rival social speeches at that particular moment and it circulates them thus interfering in the social conflicts and fights (Kellner, 2001, p. 129). The idea that the producers of a text prefer a certain ideology can be corroborated with the actual tendencies in the attitudes of the target-audience of that particular text. Therefore, if an audio-video text conveys explicitly or implicitly a certain social speech, the appreciations of the audience will show to what extent the speech promoted by the film is adopted by the audience in general or by a specific audience. In what concerns the message conveyed by a source in the mass culture sphere, it can be analyzed using the visual analysis that Valentin Marinescu considers to be an analysis of the narrative: the narrative is actually a cause and effect relationship which forms a chain of events occurring in the construction of the filmed image on the action, time and space (Marinescu, p. 189).

71

It is more difficult to find how the audience receives what the source conveys than to evaluate the meaning of a media product, because the audience of the world media is enormous and the analysis methods are always fragmentary. The rise of a star: from the bad girl to the opinion shaper When different types of information is delivered to the audience, it also receives a pair of glasses in order to see the reality, says Gerstle (apud Derville, p. 93). In the case of television shows on celebrities, the stars often become victims of the paparazzi who invade their private life and afterwards build the stars life based on pictures or video recordings. There are also stars who are accomplices to the efforts of the tabloids in order to become more famous but, in this case, they accept only the portrayals which are believed to bring more success with the audience. In other words, the audience has once again an important role in filtering the desirable/undesirable behaviors of the stars. With the help of different media devices, the stars eventually reveal those aspects of their lives which are accepted and appreciated by the audience. However, it is not easy to choose the desirable behaviors of a star from the point of view of the audience because it is difficult to identify the way in which the media audience manifests (Beciu, p. 81). The stars submissiveness to the audiences desires makes us often notice unexpected changes of the stars image (for instance, Madonna has been considered to be a bad girl for a long time but lately she seems to be preoccupied with the social causes she deplored the Roma people being discriminated during her concert in Romania). It is interesting to ponder over the fact that the actions of the stars who support the political correctness are not always well received by the fans, as it happened when Madonna militated against Roma discrimination at her concert in Bucharest. Madonna tried to speak about the Roma population in Eastern Europe who suffer for being discriminated against during a break of her two-hour show in Romania, according to the British news channel Sky News. She said that it made her sad and that no one should be a victim of discrimination of any type. It has been brought to my attention that there is a lot of discrimination against Roma in Eastern Europe and it made me feel very sad. said the artist during the song La Isla Bonita, which she sang in gypsy style. Associated Press writes that the boos were even more intense when Madonna mentioned the gays. We believe that Roma, gays, people who are different should be accepted. They all should be treated likewise, remember that. continued the Queen of Pop. Many of 60.000 Romanians who came to the concert were outraged by Madonnas message, but she did not have any other reaction, say the journalists (www.ziare.com, Thursday, august 27th 2009, 8.04 PM, author: Alexandru Toreanik). Kate Muir (The face that launched a thousand theses: Madonna, The Times (London, UK), August 4th, 1992) reviews several academic approaches regarding the different faces of Madonna. One of the approaches belongs to Laurie Schulze (A Sacred Monster in her Prime: Audience Construction of Madonna as low-Other) who wonders why some people designate Madonna in such unfavorable terms: the promoter of the most primitive form of popular culture despicable, marginal and so on. Laurie Schulze form Denver University said that if Madonna is so controversial, it means that she is representative for the anxieties, pressures and actual/present desires of the world. Madonnas portrayal in unfavorable terms can be undoubtedly made by those who see the world in pre-modern terms. On the contrary, the acceptance of her points of view is an attribute of the followers of postmodernism. In trying to bring again to the centre the consciousness of the peripheries, we retrieve the romantic adventure of the marginal (Connor, p. 321). The reconsideration of the centre and the periphery which characterize this conception explain to a certain extent the importance gained by themes which were formerly marginal (sexuality, vices and so on). Thus, Madonna, who brings these themes on wave, becomes a remarkable example for the researches who want to contribute to the affirmation/confirmation of postmodern theories. 72

Other attempts of analysis are based on her music which they analyze note by note and always keep finding new meanings or focus on how Madonna violates the decency of the middle class. The academics who stop upon Madonnas figure end up describing her in more and more sophisticated terms: Metatextual Madonna, the Freudian Madonna, the Sadeian Madonna, the Baudrillian Madonna, the Postmodern Madonna, the Postfeminist Madonna (cf. Kate Muir). Who is SHE beyond the spotlights, Photoshop corrections, researches portrayals and journalists views? The fragment below is from the Pro TV news about Madonnas arrival at the concert in Bucharest. Actually, we notice that the audience who wants to know the real Madonna, regardless of what the marketing and media have constructed, does not manage to achieve it. The audience will keep on having the constructed/prefabricated images: On Wednesday afternoon before the rehearsal, Madonna hasnt left the royal suite in the five-star hotel, where she stayed with her children and her boyfriend, too, the model Jesus Luz. The singer left the hotel around 4.30 pm dressed in a white sports suit, a white baseball cap and sunglasses [These outfit details become significant for the shaping of a public image associated to purity. In this way, the pop star adjusts identity building to contextual elements, in keeping with the features of the targeted audience (Boicu 2011 p. 122).]. At 3.25 pm the dancers in Madonnas band headed for Izvor area. From the airport, the star and her staff got on armored cars with black windows, so no one managed to take a peek inside. They spent the night at a five-star hotel in Victoriei street. The floor where they were accommodated became a fortress guarded by 40 bodyguards who made sure that not a soul entered there. The fans have waited in vain until late at night in Victoriei street hoping they would glimpse her at the window. Madonna probably went to sleep. While the artist didnt show, at 10 pm some of the dancers in her band left the hotel and went to a pub nearby. They didnt talk to the journalists. They were hoping to find an open club in the area but they returned disappointed (stirileprotv.ro/.../surse-madonna-ajunge-azi-la-18-... August 27th, 2009). A public figure followed by both her fans and detractors who want to find what abominable things she might have done in order to question her even more, has of course been deconstructed in the online environment, too, a place of debate where passions lay on a planet where opposing poles are populated with statements of total submission or complete hatred declared in trivial terms. The comments of the readers of the article published on the Pro TV website reached 964 in June 2012. This great number of posts proves the great interest that the Romanians show for Madonna. Many of the comments are critical and very critical towards her, but the fact that she stirs so many debates makes us agree with Kate Muir who said that this star causing so many controversies might mean that even today she absorbs form the public o series of fears, dreams and views and then returns them to the audience in a different form. After so many years that she has been portrayed and Madonna herself portrayed herself as a bad girl both with the intention of appealing to the fans and also to provoke the critical audience in an attempt to irritate, stir debates/controversies which might help her sell her music, we ask ourselves the following question: which are the grounds/postulates motivating the urge to change attitudes? In other words, we wonder whether it is possible that the power she gained in the fight with the more or less favorable audience through unorthodox means gives her the ammunition she needs in order to get involved in social causes and thus we witness a Freudian collective sublimation. If the answer to the question were affirmative, we might say that Madonna guides us on an initiatic path with a desirable end. Thus, by invoking the dark and the powerful in the human being, she draws our attention (willy-nilly) and then shows us the right path of the great causes. Another reason why the star has acquired a great power of influence may be the consequence of the attention she received from the universities that have credited her undoubted merits in undermining the patriarchal, racist and capitalist structures (Melanie Morton provides an example in this case when she analyzed the song Express Yourself in a deconstructivist 73

manner). Surprisingly, the stars construction become reason for dispute between the academics specialized in cultural studies and media. Thus, Cathy Schwichtenberg, editor for The Madonna Connection (apud Kate Muir), says: Most of the foolish things are produced by the press rather than the academic community. The academic community that takes interest in Madonna circulates the idea of the stars independence and even contestation of the dominant patriarchal culture (Real, p. 113). If we think about the researchers view on the stars social commitment through both the messages of their musical texts and the public image of their private life, we might believe that this is the source of an enormous power of influence (even when the audience can be puzzled by the anti-discrimination fight led by the stars, as it happened during Madonnas concert in Bucharest). The studies regarding the globalization tendencies in media and the music industry are not insignificant. These studies state that there might be some sort of a sui-generis spiral of silence: the audience in a certain country/continent might be impressed by a stars great popularity on several continents and then take into consideration that particular star (including his/her political views) as a result of his/her impressing notoriety.
Bibliography Barbier, Frederic; Bertho Lavenir, Catherine,2000: Histoire des medias, Paris: Armand Colin; Beciu, Camelia, 2011: Sociologia comunicarii si a spatiului public, Iasi: Polirom Berger, Peter, L.; Luckman, Thomas, 1999: Construirea social a realitii, Bucureti: Univers; Boicu, Ruxandra, 2011: Ethosul prezidenial i stereotipurile de gen in Daniela RovenaFrumuani (ed.), Ipostaze Discursive, vol. II, pp. 115-150, Bucureti: Editura Universitii din Bucureti; Briggs, Asa; Burke, Peter, 2005: Mass-media. O istorie social: De la Gutenberg la Internet, Iai: Polirom; Connor, Steven, 1999: Cultura postmodern. O introducere n teoriile contemporane", Bucureti: Meridiane; Derville, Gregory, 1997: Le pouvoir de medias. Mythes et realites", Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble; Fiedler, Roger, 2004: Mediamorphosis - s nelegem noile media", Cluj-Napoca: Idea Design & Print; Giddens, Anthony, 2000: Consecinele modernitii", Bucureti: Univers; Ilut Petru, 2001: Sinele i cunoaterea lui: Teme actuale de psihosociologie, Iai: Polirom; Kellner, Douglas, 2001: Cultura Media, Iai: Institutul European; Kellner, Douglas, 2003: Media spectacle", London: Routledge; Livingstone, Sonia, 1999: Lenquete comparative europeene in Reseaux, No 92-93, Paris: CNET/HERMES; Marinescu, Valentina, 2005: : Metode de studiu in comunicare", Bucuresti, Niculescu; Muir, Kate, 1992: The face that launched a thousand theses; Maddona",The Times [London (UK)] 04 Aug 1992; Silverstone, Roger, 1999: Televiziunea n viaa cotidian", Iai:Polirom; Tomlinson, John, 2002: Globalizare i cultur", Timioara: AMARCORD; *** www.ziare.com www.stirileprotv.ro

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Fiction in media of information

75

Mediatized Cultural Reality: Fact or Fiction?In Search of New Concepts

Dobrinka Peicheva- South-West University Neofit Rilski, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria.

Internet and mobile telephones, which have become part of the everyday lives of people, are meta-media cultural products that concentrate in themselves nearly all the communication means and nearly all the arts that have ever existed. With the exception of live art, all traditional media and cultural practices are located in them in a duplicated, and often modified, form; there they unfold in a boundless, dynamic trajectory. Moreover, many other new media have found a haven in the Internet (and in mobile phones and interactive television, for that matter), including collective and personal sites, blogs, podcasts, wiki forms, social networks, profiled communities, etc. (Humphreys, 2005; Katz, 2006; Kim et al., 2007). They emerge as mega-aggregates of media content and cultural content, and transform our notions of culture and cultural life, of authorship and co-authorship, of participation and co-participation, of possession of cultural products, of purchase and sale, etc. (Cammaerts, 2008, Ahonen, 2008; Domingo, Heinonen, 2008).) Some time ago, when video and specialized TV channels first appeared (meant for an audience of specific target groups), they were said to be a peak in the evolution of the media. Video and profiled television channels provided the possibility of asynchronic communication, of possessing the audiovisual products themselves, of choosing the time and place for contact with the products. By this resource they revolutionized what had until then been a one-way communication model, and made it a two-way model; the audience changed from a passive into an active participant in the process of communication. The new communication model was, in a way, the end of an evolution and there was no indication efforts would soon be made to find new media and communication peaks. However, the dissemination of the Internet provoked a rethinking of forecasts about new communication means and of qualifications of peaks. Scholars had to restrain their prognoses in this respect, due to the appearance of modifications of the existing media in the Internet and the appearance of completely new online media not existing in physical space (blogs, sites, etc.). Today, no self-respecting scholar would talk about a peak in communication means, none would dare make a forecast as to what new means will appear or theorize about their positive and negative cultural developments. The new media amidst the transformations in communications and culture The new media have become established as something more than a means of reproduction and broadcasting. And the people taking part in the Internet and in telephone communication have become more than consumers. Through the resources of the new media many people have taken on the new role of disseminators of cultural products, have turned into independent media through which, and in the framework of which, contents are created and disseminated. By increasing, as a result of this, the share of active communication, the new media imply that theorizing should go in new directions: towards the conceptualization of communication itself and of its restructuring, the conceptualization of participation in culture and in models of cultural behaviour, the conceptualization of public space, etc. Interpersonal communications were perhaps the first abode of media-determined transformations in our times. The sustained positioning of mobile telephones has changed interpersonal communication. The attractive tariff plans that mobile operators are offering, attract people and contribute to increased communication through mobile means. In fact, communication is not rarely done for its own sake, as people seek to reach the tariff limits. This tariff-determined, mediated way of communicating is restructuring interpersonal communication itself, directing it from live to media-determined, from stationary to mobile. Actually, mobility is the other important determinant for the restructuring of interpersonal communications, both the 76

direct ones, which are declining, and the indirect ones, which are increasing but shifting towards mobile means of communication. (Ishii, 2006; Wei & Lo, 2006; Katz & Sugiyama, 2006; Kim, H., Kim, G. Park., Rice, 2007; Lu, & Weber, 2007). An important accelerating factor is the possibility of instantaneous response, which is the completing element in the act of communication. Such response, which not long ago was located in live forms of communication, is now becoming an immanent feature of written contacts as well. Sending written greetings by mobile communication means makes possible the instantaneous response of recipients in different points of time and space, and this brings about the transformation and restructuring of previous practices. The possibility of instantaneous response stands out as a revolutionary development in the mediatized society. Mobility and the instantaneity that accompanies it, have proven to have a unique advantage over the limitations of stationary communications and distance. Interpersonal communication through the mobile media is growing and reaching a mass scale, imposing thereby new concepts for identifying the forms and kinds of communication. (Campbell, 2007; Peicheva, 2011) The mobile character of the new media are bringing about a transformation not only in interpersonal contacts. Changes are also taking place in todays cultural processes. The sustainable positioning of the Internet and the cell phone within culture, and of culture within the new media, is resulting in significant mobile transformations of culture, both with respect to creation and dissemination and as regards cultural participation. Culture is also becoming instantaneous and mobile in character. The modern dimensions of cultural changes are related to participation in culture, to the possibility of instantaneous and direct participation in cultural life, and to transformations in participation as such. Among the new communication means, the mobile telephone was the first to provide the possibility for non-traditional cultural participation. By means of the option of creating personal contents, the presence of the separate individual in cultural life has become transformed from passive into something vividly active. From a recipient of cultural content, the separate individual is taking on the role of communicator, from viewer he/she is becoming an author; from consumer, producer; from contemplator, disseminator, etc., in assimilating and applying various other professional skills, such as those of photo reporter, journalist, photographer, movie director. People now take part in all branches of cultural life not only by the creation and dissemination of cultural products, but also as live sources and material for other creations (Molyneaux, 2008). The video clips created and sent to specialized Internet sites (such as YouTube) are often used by world media companies in their programmes (Jenkins 2007). According to information found on the YouTube blog15, over 13 million hours of video were uploaded during the year 2010. On the average, 850 000 minutes of video recording were added to the site each day. We learn that people watched more than 700 billion video clips in a year. Video clips are used not only as a visual support for verbal arguments on television programmes, but also as original audiovisual units. These and other practices are particularly forceful arguments that individuals are creators and disseminators of cultural production and can therefore be defined as independent media. But it is not only by creating and disseminating video clips with their mobile phones that people play the role of individual media. The administration of personal sites, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, etc., in the Internet tends to break down and enrich individual media practices. A sociological survey conducted by the Sociological Laboratory of New Bulgarian University in 2009162 has found that 12 percent of the respondents had their own site; 5,5 percent of
1

Global faces and networked places. (2009) Retrieved from http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wpcontent/uploads/2009/03/nielsen_globalfaces_mar09.pdf 2. The representative sociological surveys on Mobile phones and models of internet usages were conducted by assoc. prof. Ivan Evtimov in NBU- Laboratory of sociology, 2009. Retrieved from: http://bgsociety.nbu.bg/4.htm

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respondents indicated they had their own blog. The popularity of individual sites is indicated by over 40 percent of the surveyed persons, while well-known bloggers attract the attention of 12,3% of the participants in this type of communication. It was found that genuine participants in cultural life are between one fifth and one fourth of the surveyed persons, predominantly people from the younger age groups. The active participation of young people in cultural life appears to offer a new theoretical perspective and to be an important socio-cultural phenomenon. It seems that the creativity in fan fiction is the clearest demonstration that individuals are becoming creative communicators who materialize their responses in the form of new creative objectifications. The fan audience of a given work of art, who become, as it were, co-authors to the original creators, are actual co-participants in the creation and completion of the images of the personages; they objectify themselves as interpreters of the work of the initial authors. The creation of various video products and of fan fictions through the new communication means is a media-determined activity that demands the redefinition of the subjects of culture but also of the factors and preconditions for the multiple variants of culture. In other words, new concepts and identifications are being imposed in this respect by the video products. With regard to musical fan fictions, Nancy Baym (2010) writes: Mobility makes it much easier for music fans to turn to one another. The phrase used to be Ill record you. Today fans make on-the-spot reviews, publish concert videos and podcasts, receive information and experience from others, and much faster than by the traditional forms. The mobile media are an expansion of what fans do with music online, but also a great transformer of the game. While Internet itself is a transformer of the game, mobility does it far quicker. Blogs are another significant form of instantaneous response and creativity. They gave birth to a new cultural phenomenon with a civic dimension to it: in blogs people take part in the interpretation of events and explanation of trends, presenting a variety of viewpoints. Blogs have become a new pathway for journalist practices, giving grounds for reference to a new journalism, to citizen journalism, to the power of citizen journalism, to the latters impact on the audience, etc. Conferences and seminars are organized, doctoral dissertations written, on the topic of citizen journalism. Bloggers and their blogs are being directly classified as new media, and they now compete with the traditional means of communication (Gillett 2007; Domingo 2008; Mansell, 2008). It is impossible to calculate how many bloggers there are today, for their number is constantly growing. Even professional journalists not only write in other peoples blogs but create their own. With reference to the old and new media, the well-known blogger Arianna Huffington (2008) writes: The new and old media may clash and oust each other but the two worlds are quickly drawing closer to each other, bringing out the best of themselves. Though Huffington describes herself as a supporter of the old media, she lauds blogs. The new media cannot fully take the place of the old, nor can they achieve results similar to those of investigative journalism, but they are a free place where peoples thoughts are respected. According to her, what is most important is that blogs give people that have no access to Reuters or Time the right to a voice, the faith they will continue to exercise that voice and that interest in it will not wane (Huffington, 2008). Citizen journalism today is a widespread cultural fact. It is becoming an immanent means of expression of civic consciousness and a sort of identification of our times. The new type of cultural participation results in a series of transformations in the reading of books, newspapers, and announcements of various kinds. Hardly anyone would deny that today, people read more than ever. They read electronic publications, emails, Facebook, all sorts of professional materials, they read and write in forums, etc. Reading and writing can continue while other activities are being conducted. The new means of communication, however, have made reading and writing highly media-determined. Of course, reading has always been mediatized, for all carriers of contents to be read have always been presented in media form: a book, a newspaper, a magazine. Today, with the appearance of new electronic forms, the carriers

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of content are supplemented by ever new electronic variations. Today one has to specify what the carrier of a text is, and the carrier from which a text is read whether it is a hard copy, email, disk, diskette, USB, etc. People often express preference for paper carriers, and not only older people. Perhaps the concern of some authors about the decline of the old media forms is groundless, but concerns are hardly groundless with regard to the possible negative physiological consequences of the new models of reading. People are reading more than ever, for if the initial cause of communication is the content itself, the text itself, today this text exists in many new media forms. Moreover, it is leading to the appearance and establishment of a new type of consumer relationship. Many of the texts are fully accessible in the Internet. In many cases there is no need to obtain them through purchase or to pay for them on contact. Despite the constant appeals for regulating and restricting their access, the latter can be obtained for nearly all cultural forms: the press, the radio and television, scientific production, books, articles, cinema, musical works. The unlimited technical possibility for sharing and downloading products is one of the preconditions for the sustainable positioning of these products in the everyday lives of people. In her article I Read, You Read, He e-Reads. Dorotea Nikolova (2010) presents data from a large-scale survey conducted by The Book Industry Study Group in 2009, on the reading habits of people in the USA. The findings show that one out of five Americans has substituted electronic books for paper copies. The main reasons for preferring e-books, according to the survey, is their accessibility, easy search options, and environmentalist concerns. Nearly half (47 percent) of those who prefer e-books read them on computers, and the rest use special e-book readers. It was found that, two years after Amazon launched Kindle, the most popular e-book reader, 32% of the respondents indicated they preferred it. The data also show that only 28% of respondents buy e-books that have a safeguard against illegal copying. Moreover, 30% of the surveyed buyers of traditional books are not willing to wait even the three months after the publication of a book on paper carrier after which they can legally obtain it in electronic version. The growing acceptance of electronic forms is in fact due not only to considerations of economy of money and space, but also to the mobility they provide: the possibility of reading such books on a computer, on mobile phones, etc. The media determine not only the format but also the variety of possible ways of contact with the audience, and they universalize these ways to an incredible degree. Access to literature, whether fiction, scientific, educational, can be had practically anywhere. The non-traditional media create new behaviour practices in culture and bring about transformations of the existing models. The reminding resources typical for some of the applications of the new media, are also bringing about changes in cultural behaviour. In fact, this change of the cultural models is another aspect of the mobile determined socio-cultural transformations and their consequences. The new cultural practices provided by the new media for creating mobile programmes for the day, week, or month, for a kind of personal agenda setting, etc., are unmatched in the history of culture and communications. While in traditional culture the noting of the dates of meetings, of family celebrations, of special events, etc., was done mainly on paper notebooks of various kinds, and in a relatively stationary way, today this cultural model is localized in the notebooks and organizers of the mobile phones, in the social nets, in electronic mail, etc. As a natural consequence of mobility and instantaneous access, todays culture (literature, art, science, behaviour models) is becoming not only more mediatized but more globalized (Peicheva, 2003; Wall, 2007). The prerequisites of these cultural transformations are based on the immanent characteristics of the new media: speed of contacts; ubiquitous use; personalization of media and contacts; selectivity in engaging in communication; combination of written and verbal language, transportable cultural products. These immanent features are combined with the possibility for simultaneous participation in the various forms of communication: by telephone and post; audio and audiovisual; communications related to reading and writing; creative or passive 79

communication, etc. A prerequisite for the cultural transformations is the possibility of the new media to include within themselves the traditional media as well; in this sense, they prove to be an environment for media modifications. As such, they become a location of megacommunication formations, which has both foreseeable and unforeseeable innovative effects. The new media not only serve to harbor the traditional and more modern media but likewise provide a means for a variety of contacts interpersonal, group, mass-scale contacts, and determine the appearance of new communication configurations with new possibilities for creativity and participation. (Humphreys, 2005; Peicheva, 2009). They have the resource to provide a new type of cross-based cultural communication that results in new cultural models within a mobile framework (or even with no framework at all), and this capacity of theirs ultimately objectifies the constant restructurings of the space of communication and culture. These restructurings, which, as a rule, are indicators that the new media have been accepted, and even serve as labels for whole epochs (e.g. the age of traditional written culture, the age of electronic culture, etc.), have mobility as their essential characteristic. Mobility becomes cultural mobility, not simply a technical feature. On the other hand, the variety provided by the new media for cultural participation and practices, places people on a basis of equality in their striving for self-perfection and growth (Kellner 1994; Peicheva, 2006). Moreover, it leads to unlocking of peoples creative potential, to publicizing of what they have created, and to restructuring of the cultural public. Restructuring of public space The mediatization of cultural practices actually predetermines the appearance of new possibilities for publicizing and naturally results in a restructuring of public space. The restructurings of public cultural space today are related not only to those restructurings that result from the appearance and establishment of media which, though new, are traditional in their organization and way of functioning, such as the different electronic variants for politics, arts, science, etc. These restructurings are related to media that are unprecedented in their way of organization and functioning, and that come close to revolutionizing the very notion of mass communication means and the function of inter-group mediator that mass communications perform. New media are functioning in the area of communication whose specific characteristics are revolutionizing collective creativity and intermediation by reducing these to individual performance. These media are concentrating within themselves the creation and dissemination of cultural values and the control over these processes. The assuming of the role of media by individuals, a trend that has begun in the last decade and is unfolding before our eyes, is perhaps the surest demonstration of the restructuring of public cultural and media space. Instead of the collective-mediating mechanisms of publicity, the trend now is that of counter-cultural processes, in other words, of individual-mediating mechanisms for self-publicizing of ones own constructs of reality. The individuals who create sites, blogs, etc., explicitly assert that what they are making are personal constructs, in which the expressed criteria are personal, though the product is meant for the public. Edvin Sugarev writes: In my capacity as editor [of the blog], it is I, the individual, who determine its contents. The latter do not depend on any other collective will except that of its readers and it will continue to exist as long as they show interest in it. Here you can read about why things happen, not what things happen. About the mechanisms that are driving Bulgaria today; about their secret compartments and backstage (Edvin Sugarev 174). Self-publicizing is the act that underlies the new processes that cause restructuring of public media space. The increase of the number of new media can be interpreted by further developing Habermass (1995) reasoning about the expansion of public space by the Internet; the growth of new media stimulates the attempt at conceptualizing their impact on traditional publicity. In fact,
4. See http://www.svobodata.com/

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if we follow up Habermass assertion (1995) that publicity, seen in a macro perspective, is a socialization through the media, that publicity signifies to make public something already created or being created at the moment (all this, in the interest of the largest possible share of people who have access to those media), and that this is a representative publicity, then we may relate publicity in a narrower aspect to the materializing, objectifying of ideas, opinions, viewpoints, etc., at micro level. The publicizing of commentaries, publications, lectures, reports, information, etc., in the so-called individual and social media is also a form of making things public. The difference is of the same kind as that separating representative from non-representative publicity, whose dividing lines are gradually dissolving for some individuals and groups. The impact of self-publicizing can hence be arranged in two aspects: as centering and objectification within the new media, and as a new type of feedback. In both aspects, self-publicizing, as a bottom-up initiative, becomes one of the basic concepts of sociology and cultural studies, respectively of sociology of communications and of culture. It is a fundamental concept both in a more specialized aspect as expressing the concentration of communicative action and reaction and in a more general reactive-productive aspect, as a new general sociological and cultural phenomenon. Self-publicizing as an expression of the self-presentation of individuals in the new media is one of the most indicative social facts of the last two or three years; it points to the need for conceptual changes in the sociology of communications at individual, community, and institutional level. Through self-publicizing, a new structural element appears in the action aspect within the new media: a new kind of social actors who is simultaneously producer and consumer, recipient and communicator. Bloggers, forumists, authors of video clips, of fan fiction, and other materials publicized on specialized sites or in the social networks (Twitter, My Space, Netlog, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) belong to this new type of social actor. A close scrutiny and analysis of the new media practices show that self-publicizing in these media is a reactive-active phenomenon, and is the latest and most important feature in the social action aspect. Self-publicizing appears as: a counter-elitist, intentionally reactive action, as a reaction in the forums; as counter-productive when seen as an activity in postings. As a relatively new phenomenon in publicity, it not only gathers within itself both reaction and creation, but it equates communicative with social action. Self-publicity may be articulated as a response to the long violated trust in paradigms, programmes and personalities that claim to give last-instance interpretations, and in the institutions providing and ensuring publicity. In this perspective, it could be described as a resistance against the status quo in the public sphere on one hand, and, on the other, as an additional opportunity for winning new territory. Here is what E. Sugarev418 writes about his idea of the kind of blog he is proposing: [It is] About the freedom to think beyond convention, the freedom to see beyond the blinkers, the freedom to comprehend beyond the matrices, the freedom to act and be capable of bearing responsibility for ones actions. About freedom not as a political term, not as a generally-accepted norm, but freedom as an individual characteristic; freedom not according to canons and the tables of the law, but according to those who are free in spirit. Thus, publicizing may be articulated as a form of feedback that reveals paradigmatic changes of weighty socio-cultural consequences. It can be interpreted as a form of feedback that explicitly completes the communication process, the communicative action in its singularity. The new media not only make it possible for each feedback to be simultaneous and hence an equal element of mass communications; they also enable the feedback to be made public. What is more, the presence of the feedback alongside the message of the communicator (actor) in their material presence is something that revolutionizes the media constructs and objectifications. The publicizing of the feedback in this aspect makes possible the emergence of new cultural
5. Theory of communicative action. Habermass basic concepts and ideas .(In Russian) Retrieved from: http://historic.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000022/st079.shtml

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syntheses and a new kind of objectification and materialization. This type of synthesis gradually begins to correspond to the other materializations and objectifications in society. Publicizing has become fundamental in the societal aspect as well. The new media forms, such as Facebook, Twitter, are a harbor for new kinds of group publicity and structures (Fuchs 2009). The possibility for various types of presentation and self-presentation to take place, expressing a community publicity, has become a fact in these new media forms. The new social networks have been affirmed as unique cultural units and as forms of permanent reactions and publicity in a community aspect. They contain announcements, photos, achievements, authors materials, correspondence, options for telephone calls, references, etc. These new media constructs of group communication are unprecedented in the past evolution of cultural and sociocultural formations. They are indeed independent of time and space and of the age and qualification of participants; they are dynamic and internally mobile substructures, solidarities and public intents; and they tend to expand. It is not accidental that, when asked what his greatest success so far had been, Pierre Cardin answered: The fact that I became famous throughout the world! (Stoykov 2000: 177). Other people would probably give the same answer, who have become famous thanks to the media, including pop stars, sportspeople, television celebrities, even intellectuals and leaders of public opinion. It is an indisputable fact that self-publicizing points to the segmenting and demassification of mass communication, to the de-centering and atomization of public space. By it, new media pictures of reality are constructed, which are independent of the official themes and contents. These new constructed social realities are restructuring the traditional constructs of social reality. They posit strictly personalized, individual realities as a response to the official pictures. The result of this type of restructuring of public space is a simultaneous manifestation and functioning of a large variety of realities (traditional and/or personalized ones). Hence, self-publicizing is a phenomenon with indisputable cultural effects. It is an individual choice that is not officially imposed upon a person, but is value-based; a construct that combines creative challenge and the striving for unique interpretation. The fact that publicizing subsequently serves to integrate people and attract followers, makes it an even more relevant phenomenon, which involves authorship and has cultural consequences. As a striving to respond to what is happening in society, it is yet another testimony to peoples urge to fulfill themselves, a testimony to their uniqueness and potential. It reveals that individuals are active actors being interpreters and creators of on-going events. Consequently, reality in the new media and through the new media is not a virtual world. It is not only a parallel world existing alongside the physical world. Whether we like it or not, we are at the threshold of a new real reality that combines the virtual and the physical. Functioning in this new reality are individuals, groups, and institutions: they are the actors of this reality, who constantly combine the two worlds in a mediatized trajectory. Mediatized cultural reality, in all its variety, is not a fiction or a second reality - it is our factual reality.

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Storytelling the (new) Romanian Revolution. Case Study of OTV Reporting/Reshaping the January 2012 Events
Adriana tefnel - University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

Since their beginnings, human societies have passed on their cultural histories, values and norms through narratives. Whether formulated in songs, poetry, epic writings, or broadcasts, humankind has passed what it deemed as important. All over the world, at any time and in any culture, the narratives are a significant human artifact ( T.E. Cook apud Johnson-Cartee, K., 2005, p. 149) therefore they cannot lack in ours, being hidden in the most visible place: in the news. Within the society overreached by communication (Bernard Miege, 2000) media tends to replace the traditional social stance (family, school, church, peer group) and from this position it claims its role as a primary source of political information and also a resource for political acts. As constructivists have argued, media has a growing role in the construction of social imaginaries values, laws commonly shared by society on the one hand due to the highcapacity of imposing its own truth and, on the other hand, because of the practical impossibility of verifying this fact by normal individuals. The concept of news as storytelling was brought up in the landmark study by Bird and Dardenne (1988) in which the authors successfully explored the idea that news is not simply seen as objective reporting of fact, but also as a form of storytelling that functions in a mythological manner. They argued that news-makers operate like traditional storytellers, using conventional and mythological structures to (re)shape events and to (re)define the facts in the ways that reflect, reinforce and construct the audiences reality. News as storytelling. The bardic function of television. In todays media-saturated world, TV-news play a cultural role similar to that of stories in traditional cultures: using familiar, recurring narrative patterns in order to explain new events gives them a sense (an orientation) and by doing that, makes them predictable. This idea was tested by Jack Lule (2001) in an extensive study in which he traces a series of mythical archetypes in the New York Times, pointing out that heroes, tricksters, good mother and flood archetypes play out in news stories, couched in familiar and comfortable forms and describe journalists as ancient bards or scribes. He also suggests that ancient myths have taken modern form on the front page (Lule, J., 2001, p. 2) and argued that any discussion of journalism that does not account for storytelling and myth will miss a vital part of the news (op.cit. p.3). The continuity between popular ballads, broadsheets, legends, tales etc. and news as a matrix for understanding reality have been intensely analyzed by scholars: the early studies of D. A. Bird (1976) argued that folklore and mass communication share common frameworks of defined situations, structure, function and tradition (p. 285 apud S.E. Bird 1992, p. 165); D. Robins and Ph. Cohen (1978) suggest that the popularity of Kung Fu movies among British working-class youths can be explained by the correspondence of narrative conventions in the movies with those existing in oral tradition; J.H Brunvand. (1981) points out the manner in which newspapers articles sometimes become urban legends; J. Fiske shows that TV news draws on and also feeds oral traditions (1987) and with J. Hartley (1989/2002) underline the bardic function of television. The quoted authors summarized the function performed by television (and by the news in particular we may add) in its bardic role (p. 89): 1. To articulate the main lines of the established cultural consensus about the nature of reality; 85

2. To implicate the individual members of the culture into its dominant value-systems, by exchanging a status-enhancing message for the endorsement of the messages underlying ideology (as articulated in its mythology); 3. To celebrate, explain, interpret and justify the doings of the cultures individual representatives in the world out-there; using the mythology of individuality to claw back such individuals from any mere eccentricity to a position of socio-centrality; 4. To assure the culture at large of its practical adequacy in the world by affirming and confirming its ideologies/mythologies in active engagement with the practical and potentially unpredictable world; 5. To expose, conversely, any practical inadequacies in the cultures sense of itself which might result from changed conditions in the world out-there, or from pressure within the culture for a reorientation in favor of a new ideological stance; 6. To convince the audience that their status and identity as individuals is guaranteed by the culture as a whole; 7. To transmit by these means a sense of cultural membership (security and involvement). This paper argues that channel OTV(Oglinda TV, translated as Mirror TV) makes use of this bardic function of the media and (re)shapes the events from January 2012 using the mythological December 1989 in order to present the star and the owner of OTV (Dan Diaconescu) as the Savior Hero (in Girardets sense of the term). Myths and politics. An imagological perspective over politics Placed under the Rationality-sign19, the occidental thinking form which Romanians claim to be part of, has a long tradition of putting in quarantine (L. Boia, 2000, p. 31) any other way of thinking. Following Socrates and St. Augustins tradition, the Enlightenment philosophers condemned without appeal, in the name of Rationality, the old beliefs and superstitions. A long period of time, occidental philosophers undervalued mythical thinking and excluded the imaginarys scale of analysis matrix of understanding reality. Since the beginning of the 20th century the issue seems to be solved: on one hand there was a pre-logic way of thinking, particular for the primitives; on the other hand there was a logical way of thinking, particular for modern societies. In those societies, politics was seen as rational not emotional; the culture and all that makes us humans has been left aside (D. Kertzer,1988/2002, p. 19). After the Second World War, the importance of myths in political thinking couldnt be overlooked. Both Nazism and Communism did not make use of ration but of emotion and myths (Cassirer, E.1944/1994; Tismaneanu, V., 1998/1999; Boia, L., 2000, etc.) in order to impose their perspective over society; peoples response was overwhelming and an explanation was required. Besides the institutional logic and the rational thinking, the political imaginary and the mythological approach can be used for a better understanding of political history and the present. The intertwining of rational and non-rational elements may constitute the fundaments of political representation, not as intrinsic good or evil but ambivalent as argued by Wunenburger.(Wunenburger, J.J. preface of Delsol, C., Masclowski, M., Nowicki, J., 2002/2003, p.15). Scholars (Edelman, M., 1985/1999, Wunenburger, J.J., 2005, Kertzer, D.,1988/2002, Coman, M., 2003,etc.,) recognize the contribution of the imaginary in understanding the political complex reality. Without myths and storytelling, the political reality would be reduced to a chaotic conglomerate of facts. Myths and metaphors permit men to live in a world in which the causes are simple and net and the remedies are obvious. In place of a complicated empirical world, men hold to a relatively few, simple, archetypal myths, of which the conspiratorial enemy and the omnicompetent hero-savior are the central ones. In consequence, people feel reassured by
19

Rationality was deified during the French Revolution, contradiction left unnoticed by those who preached the separation of myth, emotion and the imaginary

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guidance, certainty, and trust rather than paralyzed by threat, bewilderment, an am unwanted personal responsibly for making judgments. (Edelman, M., 1971, p.26) Myths light up shadowed areas of politics, even if the process is incomplete: not from the shadow to the light, but from the shadow to semi-darkness, from the hidden to the interpretable. In this semi-darkness, the political battle is for imposing the interpretation-frame or the scheme (socially constructed) through which one can read reality. The social schemes are abstract symbolical systems which shape the knowledge; their relevance are a result of the important cognitive economy and of the stability of understanding. Those schemes predefine the shape of the events and pinpoint the optimal reactions. In the study Ritual, politics and power (1988/2002) David Kertzer explains the manner in which the schematic-thinking (re)shapes reality and makes it comprehensible: Since we cannot have an exhaustive perception of the world we came in contact with, the perception must be selective (). Our perceptions are rather the result of the mental schemes we have at our disposal; those schemes determine not only the information we chose to take into consideration, but also suggest the possible way of interpretation. (D. Dertzer, op.cit. p.97) In the same context, the quoted author mentions the link between the act of knowledge and emotion. The more emotionally aroused in the event, the lower is the concentration and less explanatory categories are taken into consideration. () at the extreme limits, the people under the emotion empire risk to operate in a dychotomic manner and divide individuals (or events,.) : into me-against me; good against evil. The January 2012s events were, without a doubt emotional, and therefore prone to a dychotomic representation and mythological (re)configuration of reality. This paper will underline OTVs usage of myths, especially the Revolution mythology influence. The who and The what: our story about the key elements of the analysis Even if this papers focus is not on the events themselves, but on the mediated (re)construction of those events, we will briefly present them drawing the attention to the fact that this is just another way of storytelling, our own. a. The who: OTV channel OTV channel has its own place in Romanian media history: it is the ordinary peoples television; with low economical and symbolical resources; those who do not identify themselves with other TV channels. It is a television where the rules of society are placed between brackets; it is a free space for exaggerations, for personal attacks, for aggressive nationalism and populism. The owner who is also the star of the channel appears in long talk-shows, without an imposed structure or emission-time, addressing subjects which are considered taboo or not important for other national TV channels. The Elodia story, a 1000 episodes talk-show about a missing and presumably dead lawyer, brought up the performance of this TV channel. The studio was moved in a larger location, in order to underline its new status: a legitimate television, frequently attended by personalities. Even President Traian Bsescu back then a friend of Dan Diaconescuparticipated in some electoral broadcasting in 2009. This friendship, though, did not keep Dan Diaconescu out of justice for economic fraud. In 2010 he was remand in custody and spent 24 hours in jail. Upon his release from custody, he announced his intention of running for presidency and becoming an adversary of Traian Bsescu. The battlefield is a mythological one: The Good (Dan Diaconescu) and the Evil (Traian Bsescu); the maverick which becomes the Savior; the Conspiracy Myth (including a foreign conspiracy); etc.

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b.

The What: the January 2012 events The trigger of what happened in January 2012 riots in Romania was Raed Arafat 20s resignation as Health sub secretary of state, after an argument in a political talk-show - with president Traian Bsescu. This event was presented as a forced resignation, another chapter in the story about Traian Bsescus authoritarian presidency. Piaa Universitii is the mythological place of the Romanian 1989 Revolution (Inter Barricade) and the traditional gathering point for spontaneous political meetings. Obviously, those who supported Raed Arafat, or who simply did not appreciate Traian Bsescus politics, gathered there to express themselves. After some violent incidents (some staged, some argued) massive police forces were sent to intervene.. The populations reaction was symmetrical since many people joined the protests. Slowly Raed Arafat was forgotten and peoples complaints against Traian Bsescus regime took over the scene. The re-empowering of Raed Arafat did not produce any calming effects. The manifestation continued for the whole month of January (even on extremely low temperatures) and slowly vanished after media lost interest in it.

News storytelling structure The political imaginary is, by excellence, polarized. Every symbol has its antithesis: day and night, Good and Evil, water and fire, spirit and matter, Christ and Antichrist, construction and destruction, progress and decay, ying and yang etc.; one cannot exist without the other. This polarization proves the emotional tendency through simplification and dramatization. The grey tones have disappeared; the reality is either black or white. The structure of OTV news regarding January 2012 events is based on two mythological doublets: good-evil; sacred-profane which create a Cartesian system of axis that configures and gives sense to the entire discourse. a. Good-Evil doublet This doublet is used in the story narrated by OTV in order to create an imagined community (in an Andersonian sense of the term) of PP-DD21 voters; a community lead by Dan Diaconescu, casting as the Saving Hero. Traian Bsescu is, by antithesis the Anti-Hero. Synthetically, this doublet has the following composition: Table 2: the Good-Evil doublet in OTVs story about January 2012 events Good: Dan Diaconescu Evil: Traian Bsescu Protesters (The People, PP-DD People) The State OTV: the only television that tells the Truth Other televisions: misinforming PP-DD: the protesters party Other parties: part of the corrupt system The low level of understanding between different groups of protesters was a distinctive and an assumed mark of January 2012 events. Everyone who had something to say could find a tribune in Piaa Universitii. The anti-Bsescu discourse was dominant but not hegemonic. Some manifested against the entire political system, others against PDL22 and its government, or against Traian Bsescu only. The feminists find a place to express their claims; the football fans manifested against the football mafia; the nationalists stated the necessity of the Union with the neighboring country Moldova23. There were even some voices that requested legalization of
20

A foreign origin doctor (Syrian), the founder of SMURD emergency medical unit. In a country that rejects the Stranger, Raed Arafat is one of the most esteemed Romanians, decorated by two presidents (Traian Basescu being one of them). 21 The Peoples Party- Dan Diaconescu (the party created and lead by Dan Diaconescu) 22 Back then the main governmental party 23 Once part of the Romanian territory

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soft drugs. Without taking these facts into account, in OTVs story the protesters were presented as a single voice, with a single demand Down with Bsescu! (Jos Bsescu!).There was also an implicit demand, stated at first by Dan Diaconescu himself and confirmed by the protesters invited in the OTV studio: Dan Diaconescu, president! or via SMS Mr. Dan24, please take control over Romania! (a text-message request, 16.01 20.21). Opposed to The People is The State (the corrupt one). Regardless of their political involvement, the States representatives acted unitarily against the People: the Prefect of Bucharest demanded the cleaning of the square until midnight; the Mayor of Bucharest asked the citizens to stay at home; the MAI (Internal Affairs Minister) announced that all the salary debts will be paid in a week; the police forces acted non-democratically. The police are randomly searching the protesters and filming them they must state the day, the month, the year of birth and other details of this sort (...) this means that Bsescus intention is to arrest them (16.01; 20.32). Another example: The entire local police forces, Oprescus25 famous local police were concentrated at the University Square (...). The local police forces are against the People, too! (15.01; 20.35) A similar antithesis is placed in the media field: OTV the new Free Public Television from the first 1989 revolutionary days; other media - part of the corrupt system: we are left with the only television that speaks the Truth, the viewers said that! All the other televisions misinform the people; they report a low number of protesters and speak only of the polices casualties (15.01, 20.10). The misinforming practiced by other televisions is a grotesque one, strongly undiminished by camera footage: to speak as other televisions do, there are approximately twenty protesters there. But there are a thousand- five hundred of them! (18.01; 21.23). OTV remained the only television close to the People and its role is believed to be acknowledged as such. A short message (SMS) read live by Dan Diaconescu is a good example: OTV is the lamp that lays by the Romanian peoples bedside. This way it (the Romanian people, our note) might get redemption (19.01; 20.24). Last but not least, an antithesis is presented in the political field: all parliamentarian parties, from PDL26 to PSD27, from PNL28 to UNPR29, from UDMR30 to minority representatives turned their back to the People and voted against the People. (15.01. 20.14). All political forces are united against the People: Crin Antonescu31 demanded the police to arrest the hooligans; Sorin Oprescu asked how much time they can resist; Piedone32 beat some protesters himself yesterday, Gigi Becali33, Silviu Prigoan34 who spoke about hooligans that must be punished (16.01; 20.26).

b.

The Sacred-Profane doublet The second doublet that helps configured the OTV story is used in order to delimit the profane every-day life from the sacred revolutionary times (both 1989 and, by contagion, 2012).

24 25

A familiar name used in order to underline the link between Dan Diaconescu and his fans Sorin Oprescu, independent mayor of Bucharest, former member of PSD, at that time an opposition party; 26 Democrat Liberal Party (the main governmental party at that moment) 27 Social Democrat Party opposition party at that time 28 National Liberal Party-opposition party at that time 29 The Union for Romanian Progress governmental party 30 Democratic Union of Hungarian Minority-governmental party 31 Leader of PNL, an opposition party at that time. 32 Mayor of one of Bucharests districts, UNPR member (governmental party) at that time. Man with immense force, as his nickname (legally transformed in his name in order to be recognized by voters) suggested 33 Leader of PNG, non-parliamentarian party with the same electorate as PP-DD. 34 a PDLs MP.

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Some myths of the 1989 revolution are used in order to legitimate the current events and to (re)present them as part of a new Romanian revolution. 1.The terrorists myth: the story of an elite force faithful to Nicolae Ceausescu that infiltrated revolutionary masses and caused casualties among them in order to maintain the communist status-quo. The terrorists are, as in 1989, members of the intelligence, by nature a secret service and for that an occult force; their methods are similar: creating chaos and anarchy. Consequently, the 1989s revolutionary call do not shout! is transformed in the panicked question: Who is shooting? (16.01; 21.10) or Are you hurt? (15.01; 20.19). Also, tributary to this myth is the information35 regarding three casualties. 2.The Inter36 barricade: one of the most respected symbols of Romanian revolution is reconfigured in order to underline the evilness of police forces. Once there was an obstacle that prevented the police to reach the protesters and kept them away from the sacred place of Revolution, a new barricade (in fact a burning tire) was built by the law enforcements in order to prevent people to join the manifestation: The barricade is at the auto-underpass. They fear that people from Berceni37 are coming that way (...) those are the barricades ordered by Oprescu (15.01; 20.39). One should not be concerned by the inadequacy between those two stories or of the inefficiency of such construction38. The emotional schematic thinking is not interested in casual details. A barricade is a barricade, no matter the method or the purpose it was built for; and an event with a barricade is a textbook revolution. 3. Ceausescus loop: Traian Bsescus absence is treated in the same manner as Ceausescus loop. The hiding place, Scrovitea, one of Ceausescus palaces, is well known to the public, underlining the fact that some intelligence forces have already joined the People. Traian Bsescu is not the only politician that looped. Victor Ponta39 left the country being somewhere, in Brussels, in Monte Carlo (17.01; 20.25). 4. The call for the Army to join the People: in 1989 this was a crucial moment (under the slogan the army is with us!). In 2012 this moment is anticipated and demanded somebody tell me that the military police are unsatisfied, too. I asked them to use the amendment stipulating that an unreasonable, illegal order must not be followed (16.01; 20.45). 5. The communists elite trial is anticipated and Dan Diaconescu is self-casted in the prosecutors role. 6. The spatial continuity of the University Square (Piaa Universitii) and the television set: the same pilgrimage of protesters that bring news from the Square, addressing the People; the only difference is that in 2012 the channel people address is not the public television, but OTV. 7. Other mythological similarities: Elena Ceausescus request of washing the blood from Timisoaras streets is similar to the one of Bucharests prefect; Ceausescus shout stay calm in your places! Reappears in 2012 as Citizens, remain calm at home! (Sorin Oprescu, quoted on scroll); the contradictory information about the trains which stopped in-between stations, interrupted communication,, the hidden number of the wounded/dead, etc.. Even the forecasted temperature remained the same, extremely warm for that time of the year. 8. The missing myth: the trigger. Even if very appealing for a mythical approach, the similar beginnings of the two events40 have been left aside. In OTVs story only one Hero is

35 36

This information was not confirmed by other media or by police, neither denied by OTV in the analyzed period. Intercontinental hotel, near The University Square. In front of this hotel a barricade was build in 1989. 37 A Bucharest neighborhood. The mention is not made without an explanation: there are a lot of OTV viewers in this suburban neighborhood. 38 The subway underpass is for auto-usage not for pedestrians, there are other, more efficient, ways of getting from Berceni to the University Square, Berceni is a quiet neighborhood, inhabited mostly by retried people. 39 Leader of PSD, an opposition party at that time. 40 A citizen of foreign origin, highly esteemed is forced to dislocate for opposing the system; silent manifestation of solidarity; brutal force orders a response

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needed. Raed Arafats role is minimized, and he is associated with the oppressive system (at an innuendo level). Conclusions Graphically represented, the storys structure is the following:
Figure 1: the structure of OTVs story regarding January 2012 events

The time-line is not a linear but a cyclical one (mythological concept): the astral moment of its beginning is the 1989 revolution; the corrupt today and the glorious tomorrow that will punish the present and re-install the Golden Era (also known as the golden age, the promised land, etc.). The mythological construction eludes reality and reshapes it to serve various political interests. The 2012 events are forced to fit in the 1989 revolutionary frame. There are two sets of identity tensions which are being highly discussed: Traian Bsescu is associated with Nicolae Ceausescu, while Dan Diaconescu Traian Bsescus successor - is dissociated with Ion Iliescu Nicolae Ceausescus successor and the leader of the corrupt present political system, suggesting another possible end for the story: the Revolution lead by Dan Diaconescu will not be stolen but will be left to the People, or, at least to the Peoples Party. Bibliography Boia, Lucian (2000) For a Imaginarys History/ Pentru o istorie a imaginarului ed. Humanitas Bird, Elizabeth (1992) For enquiring minds: a cultural study of supermarket tabloids University of Tennessee Press Brunvand, Jan Harold (1981) The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and their Meanings Norton Cassirer, Ernst (1944/1994) An Essay of Man/ Eseu despre om ed. Humanitas Coman, Mihai (2003) Media, Myth and Ritual. An Anthropological Perspective/ Mass-Media Mit si Ritual. O perspective antropologica ed. Polirom Delsol, Chantal; Maslowski, Michel; Nowicki, Joanna (2002/2003) Political Myths and Symbols in Central Europe/ Mituri si simboluri politice in Europa Centrala ed. Cartier Edelman, Murray (1971/1999) The Symbolic Uses of Politics/Politica si utilizarea simbolurilor ed. Polirom Fiske, John (1987) Television Culture Routledge Fiske, John (1989) Understanding Popular Culture Routledge Fiske, John; Hartley, John (1989/2003) Reading Television/ Semnele televiziunii ed. Institutul European 91

Girardet, Raoul (1986/1997) Political Myths and Mythologies/ Mituri si mitologii politice ed. Institutul European Johnson-Cartee, Karen (2005) News Narratives and News Framing: Constructing Political Reality Kertzer, David (1999/2002) Ritual, Politics and Power/Ritual,politica si putere ed. Univers Lule, Jack (2001) Daily news, eternal stories: the mythological role of journalism The Guilford Publications Miege, Bernard (1989/2000) Society Conquered by Communication/ Societarea cucerita de comunicare ed. Polirom Robins David;Cohen Philip (1978): Knuckle-Sandwich: Growing Up in the Working-Class City, Pelican, Harmondsworth Tismaneanu, Vladimir (1999) Fantasies of Salvation. Democracy, Nationalism and Myths in Post-Communist Europe ed. Polirom Wunenburger, Jean-Jacques (2005) Political imaginary/ Imaginariile politicului ed. Paideia

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Convergencies places and elements of fiction in mass-media

Mdlina Blescu- University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

The current study is aimed to prove that the mass-media represents indubitably a space of fiction, whether intentional or unintentional, carrying within it numerous elements which contribute, differently and to various degrees of influence, to the main feature of the fictionality of the mass-media field. Given the context, fiction is generally perceived as the representation produced in one's imagination, which is not real or has no counterpart in reality (DEX, 1998, p. 377). At a first glance, seen from the perspective of its own professional culture, mass-media corresponds to facts, reality, concrete action, tangibility, lack of doubt, transparency, direct access to events etc. This is also inferred by the terms and phrases employed every day by the journalists, such as live from the scene, raw reality, hot news etc as well as from the perspective of the universal values of the profession (objectivity, truth, transparency, etc.) they convey in situations which imply more or less reflective speeches about the professional practices. But if we were to consider the mass-media only from this angle, it would leave too little room for discussions about it and about fiction and it would have to be understood as a type of socio-professional activity whose core would be the accurate reflexion of reality through the senses and the proper writing and speaking skills. If we are to analyse mass-media as the mirror reflecting scenes, people and actions, throughout the simple caption and retransmission of the true and fair view of reality by means of specific professional techniques, it becomes very difficult to associate fiction to mass-media. However, if we push aside the shell of the ideological discourse of the journalists about their own occupation and the few frequently used clichs meant to signal it (such as the journalists are objective, the journalists tell the truth, the journalists report the raw reality from the scene etc.), the debate about the existence of fiction in mass-media becomes possible. Furthermore, the scientific literature abounds in critical reviews dismantling piece by piece the mechanistic vision of the journalists on their own occupation. After nearly a century of media research in the field of mass-media seen from various useful perspectives, the critical tradition of mass-media investigation prevails a generally accepted idea at the present time. Beyond the stereotypes and representations from inside or outside mass-media, it represents a a complex space of interaction, alive, in constant motion, consisting of a system of organisations and heterogeneous professional practices, embodying different types of logic and professional goals, influenced by numerous factors. Therefore, the structural and functional map of mass-media as a socio-professional system indicates a series of significant spots allowing an association between media and ficti on, such as: 1) the vulnerability nodes admitting the penetration of the system by the fiction inflows, 2) the concrete means adopted by the fiction in media, 3) the mass-media products containing the hallmark of fiction. All these elements are to be found throughout the media production chain and are only specific to the transmitter profile of mass-media, as seen from the perspective of mass-communication (S. Ball-Rockeach, M. DeFleur, 1999). The characteristics applying to each of these elements of the fiction map that may occur in the media are the following: 1) In terms of nodes which may occur at the level of the production system network of relationships and interdependencies. Metaphorically speaking, inside the media space, a node allowing the penetration of fiction is either a concrete spot (for instance an interior or exterior scenery) or an abstract one (for instance the journalists creativity skills) where interventions and massive corrections of the reality are possible, diminishing the correspondence between what is real and what is represented as real. At this level, the nodes equate the most exposed production areas in terms of fiction, respectively the individual, organisational and ideological perceptions and representations of the informational practices (definition of the event, selection of stories, construction of the reality, the bureaucratic and 93

psychological and social influencing factors). One of the most useful paradigms for explaining the media reality is the constructivism, as opposed to the positivistic ideas of the journalists sustaining that the symbolic construction of reality through the perspective of various levels of filters intervening in the selection and description of the journalistic events, ranging from the psycho-individual to the bureaucratic ones, is the core argument. Constructivism is a valid tool obtaining its arguments especially from the psychological theory according to which people are, each in itself, strictly individual universes, especially in terms of the perception and representation of immediate reality mechanisms. In this respect, in terms of journalistic logic of defining events and selecting information in order to process and spread it at a large scale, we may say that the journalists themselves, given their socio-cultural baggage, represent the most subjective exposure area due to their own filtering mechanism. The key-words to be taken into consideration for this topic, representing as many individual variables, are: values, primary and secondary socialisation, perception, representation, needs, expectations, assigning. The dependency model, the use-and-satisfaction theory and the cultivation theory are just mere examples of studies which became traditional in the general framework of the masscommunication paradigm, articulated around strictly psychological notions such as: need, expectation, dependency, adaptation to the environment etc. Somehow, these theoretical models respond to the question why the individual constructions are subjectives?, attracting a somewhat expected reply, which is that the subjectivity of the media constructions is, first of all, involuntary when correlated to the personality factors and the psychological profile. Beyond the psychological factors, at the level of the selection mechanism as well, we must also mention the editorial orientation, a rather slippery concept, difficult to define apart from certain thematic directions and ideological topics established by the editorial strategy at a certain point in time. However, even so, it is strategically used by the journalists in their legitimacy discourses when faced to the need to justify certain choices they make with regards to certain facts. Most of the times, even when they make their choices according to personal options, the journalists seek refuge under the umbrella of the editorial orientation in order to justify certain approaches, means of reporting or editorial accents giving way to multiple interpretations in the public space. The difference in approach occurring when dealing with certain events, especially when it comes to political, economical and social events, can be understood through the light of the two components (psycho-individual factors and editorial orientation). When performing a comparative review of the topics discussed in two newspapers or on two different television newscasts, one may notice significant differences at the informational level, both in terms of the structure of the organisation of the message (space allocation, title, lead, approach, graphic illustration, language used) and in terms of significance. The explanation comes from the combination of individual selection factors with the general pattern of the editorial orientation, consciously or unconsciously mentally integrated in the routine of the everyday practices, from the understanding of the information at the level of the personal reference system to the delivering of it under different shapes. Example: The same topic, different approaches- Protests in Piaa Universitii reflected in the media (January 2012). Such an event as the January 2012 protests represents for each journalist an important topic, that each of them is waiting for, from a professional point of view, with some sort of cynical eagerness. Following certain apparently routine controversies, announcing major conflicts, in a live news television address, the president Traian Bsescu criticised Raed Arafat, the Secretary of State who founded the SMURD emergency service, with regards to an administrative issue. The latter presented his resignation shortly after, and from here on, through different means, people made common cause with the doctor and went to the Piaa Universitii to express their dissatisfaction with regards to the government in pow er, especially with regards to the Prime Minister and, in parallel, to the President. From then on, a few days of intensive protests have followed, reflected almost entirely by the media. However, beyond the 94

adrenalin rush of the moment felt by both the journalists and the citizens, through the emotional message of the grown-ups who experienced in the 1990s the Romanian revolution, the miners strikes and the piaa universitii phenomenon, there have been many issues regarding the description of the event. The Media Monitoring Agency ActiveWatch, a nongovernmental organisation dedicated to monitoring the media in relation to the ethical practices and democratic exercise, reported a series of media shortfalls: abandoning of the neutrality and equidistance required by the journalistic good practice, the emphasis of the sensationalism and the thorough check of the information41. According to the same source of information, the most severe and frequent types of deviations from professionalism have been associated with: outright instigation to participate in the protests or, on the contrary, outright daunting of it; processing and transmitting biased information, in favour of the Romanian Gendarmerie, without a thorough check of the information source authenticity; distorted reflection of reality on site (selection of speakers, positioning of the cameras, exaggerated speeches of the TV commentators in the studio or of the reporters, even though the images shown had rather calm contents); the journalists defiant or aggressive attitude towards some of the protesters or certain guests in the sudio; outright political militantism manifested in certain television debate shows; excessive replay of certain images, without mentioning the date and time of the depicted events42. Other points of view of certain participants (bloggers, free lancer journalists) have evinced the guiding intervention of the media in the events: ...the manifestations in Piaa Universitii have transformed into a media event, manipulated and directed by most of the televisions, each eager to gain audience and/or promote certain political parties (...) the Romanian mass-media has acted up(...). The media alignment was made instinctively by the TV news producers and the newspapers journalists. (...). In the news studios, things were exaggerated and the images, most of the times pimped up, transmitted live from the scene, were afterwards interpreted by the guest commentators.(...) The setting o the scene was made with the help of some of the leaders of the protesters, localised and mobilised starting from day four by some of the news televisions. The trainings of the mobilised citizens were done outside the broadcasting area. I spotted two such trainings.(...) Things were simple- we (the television) want to see X, the mobilising citizen would have to convince the members of his group to do whatever the television involved wanted them to do (...). The protesters sympathy and antipathy were partly lead and manipulated through sound and image. Some tried to come up with shootings which would emphasize as much as possible the uprising and the number of the protesters to this manifestation, the absolute masters of this technique being the Antena televisions, which, repeatedly created a collage of images accompanied by labels on the screen, which had nothing to do with what happened in Piaa Victoriei (in the case of the USL manifestation) or in Piaa Universitii () the news have become comments, bearing for/against messages () the Romanian media has become a main manipulation and deflection tool () most of it (there are certain notable exceptions however), continues to compromise itself (). Mass-media can no longer be the democracy watch-dog, as it has already been too trained to still be able to reflect the truth43. 2) At the level of the means of production: the most important element to be taken into consideration at this level is the language, generally referred to as set of signs, codes and symbols. Through the language, at a syntactic and semantic level, the message receives different shapes and meanings, according to the broadcasting channel and the journalistic genre by which

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http://www.paginademedia.ro/2012/01/semnal-activewatch-derapaje-grave-ale-presei-in-reflectarea-protestelor/ idem http://www.contributors.ro/reactie-rapida/o-revolta-diluata-%E2%80%93-preambul/

42 43

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the information is delivered to the general audience. The two levels of analysis are useful as they introduce different criteria of treating the information. The channel (written, audiovisual, online) builds the message especially in relation to a more efficient reception of the information and it uses a series of specific techniques for that: the written language tends to reach coherence, intelligibility, clarity, authenticity indicators etc. and it uses the graphic signs and design elements for complementarity and suggestion; the audiovisual language uses parallel elements of the nonverbal and paraverbal communication, as well as elements from the visual area techniques (photographic, cinematographic); the online language, the most recent of all, borrows elements of the traditional journalistic languages (text, image, sound) and complemented by innovative elements created, also, by the logics of efficiency in receiving the text (strategies of attracting and maintaining the attention by combining different levels/stages of lecture, graphic strategies: special letters, icons and symbols to eliminate words and reduce the time needed to go through the information, etc., strategies for a deeper reception of the information: active links to texts with similar content, interactive strategies such as the online discussion boards, strategies of reducing the ephemeral character of the message: archives, data bases, strategies of constructing the messages according to the specific of the perception by senses: words, symbols, graphics, sound, still images, moving images. The journalistic genre as model of organising the information implies the observance of certain indicators, amongst the most important of which are the relation between the journalist and the narrated reality (time of narration/presence to the event/ emotional involvement/ welldefined intention) and the language codes (subjective/neutral, general/specific etc). Obviously, the recent evolution of the professional culture paradigm involving norms, values and journalistic procedures (emphasised marketing, salient audiovisual strategies, the occurrence of new professional elements in the online environment, the tendency to adapt the messages to the technologies allowing a faster reception etc.) indicates a relaxation of the once classical delimitations between the journalistic genres and the borrowings from one to another: the news are no longer short texts, the headings, specific to the long and complex texts, appear increasingly often in the short texts, the interviews, which would be held compulsory during a face-to-face meeting between the journalist and the interlocutor are most of the times conducted by e-mail or telephone, and so forth. Where is the fiction in this? At this level, fiction can appear under different shapes. One of them refers to the information collection techniques and can show up, for instance, at the level of the information awarding rule: any piece of information received from the reality exterior to the journalist and the editorial which has no assigned source can be considered as fiction. This kind of information is being severely susceptible of having been invented in the absence of a trip to the scene or of a source. The famous sentence information received from some sources frequently used especially by the TV journalists is a questionable formula from the point of view of its truthfulness and casts doubt on the credibility of the respective piece of information, as well as on the journalists intentions. A second important form in which fiction can appear and manifest is associated to the fitting of the information. For this purpose, we can take into consideration especially the images (still or moving) which are not directly related to the narrated subject, but lie within the general category of which the journalistic topic is part of, without being captured in the specific context of the narrated situation. We may mention here the following elements: archival footage, illustration footage, images describing the general scenery without a precise context, older portrait-photos used for current subjects etc. The third form of journalistic expression bearing the mark of fiction reunites the speech disorders in relation to the values of precision, accuracy, authenticity of the information. The unidentified/unnamed sources, the lack of answers to certain questions raised naturally due to an incomplete message may be also considered generators of fiction. In that matter, they trigger rather unconscious suggestions to the mind of the receiver, as the human mind is programmed by psychological laws of representation, to perceive the whole even when confronted with incomplete (physical or 96

mental) structures. The (language) clichs and the (perception and mental representation) stereotypes represent two other important mechanisms influencing the relationship between the internal and the external reality. Through the use of outdated speech formulas applied to different situations, the clichs reduce the level of informativity and homogenize different situations, whilst the stereotypes, regarded as simple schemes of internal integration of the external world, simplify excessively the types of situations/categories, for the long run and are hard to change; therefore, once assimilated, they lower the level of information openness to situations similar to that determining the absorption of the stereotype. We observe that from the point of view of the degree of possibility of fiction both at the level of the transmitter and receiver, the key-element is the meaning, designing a generous place for interpretations and reinterpretations, creating favourable ground for fiction. The linguistic approach (language, sign, code, symbol, semiotics, structuralism, narrativity etc), the psychosociology (interaction, exchange, social influence, public opinion, opinion leader, communication networks, stereotype), are the most used elements in the analysis of the linguistic parameters (more specifically) and communicational parameters (more broadely), that may become sources of fiction. Example: Pictures used in Adevrul online (December 2010, January-February 2011, theme: Parliament): 1) Neutral illustration to the subject of the text, but not actual:

Tuesday, 8th of Feb 2011: The Proposal to oblige the broadcasters to broadcast 40% Romanian musical works was rejected by the Commission

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The Petromidia Nvodari Refinery is the main asset of Rompetrol Rafinare: Todays agenda of the Chamber of Deputies plenary session includes the debate on the Emergency Ordinance 248/2000 for the modification of the Government Emergency Ordinance no. 64/1998 regarding the Petromidia refinery privatization

Wednesday, the 2nd of Feb 2011,The witches might be obliged to issue fiscal invoices: The draft law providing that the occultism practitioners must issue fiscal invoices and pay the VAT could nt be applied even if it receives the vote of the Chamber of Deputies.

Monday, 20th of Dec 2010, The Parliament Plenery: 172 votes for, 48 votes against and three abstentions lead to the adoption by the deputies of the Emergency Ordinance 58?2010, establishing the increase in the VAT rate to 24% by modifying the Fiscal Code.

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Photo: Agrerpres: The President of the Senate, Mircea Geoan, suspends the meeting, putting in difficulty the Prime Minister Emil Boc. 2) approach): Ilustration involving contradictions to the content of the text (place, theme, topic,

Thursday, 9th of Dec 2010: Mircea Geoan believes that the presidents explanations regarding the National Day incident are deplorable

Tuesday 7th of Dec 2010, Iai, the Senate of Romania: The Senators decide to resend the Education Law to the Commission for an additional report.

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Wednesday 2nd of Feb 2011, Gypsies: The Senators of the Commissions for human rights and equality of opportunities have decided to replace the designation Rom to that of Gypsy. The approved the PDL deputy Silviu Prigoan legislative proposal.

Tuesday, 7th of Dec 2010, photo: Marian Vilu, Teo Trandafir: The Deputies started dancing a round dance Tuesday morning, on the halls of the Parliament, with a group of carol singers and a folk group. Amongst them, there were as well Teo Trandafir and Mircea Toader.

Iai, the Senate of Romania: The Senators decide to resend the Education Law to the Commission for an additional report. 3) Pictures used several times (different days, different topics):

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4)

Pictures bearing explicit editorial intervention:

5)

Pictures which have undergone technical interventions:

3) The pure products of the journalistic fiction. The psychological factors and the information production factors which, through more or less random combinations allow the identification and analysis of a large register of fictionality in the mass-media, are rather acquired through individual education and general vocational training. Apart from these two categories by nature, there is a third, different, consciously acquired one, referring to the ensemble of strategies and techniques meant to influence the behaviours at a social level. Among them, stand out those bearing a positive dimension (such as the social campaigns for humanitarian purposes like serious diseases and natural disasters) and those bearing a negative dimension (party propaganda: disinforming/para-informing/ under-informing/ over-informing etc., political election campaign marketing, disguised public relations campaigns). A forth category of the possible fiction register is related to the unprofessional and/or economical aspects of the media production (for instance, the news without impact, based on reconstitution). The fifth category of the fiction in the mass-media is represented by the debates on current topics, during which a relatively small number of guests, experts in certain fields, express their opinion. In correlation with the requirement of pluralism of opinions of the democratic public space model, a determination relationship can be established between the limited number of powerful voices (through the frequency of apparitions and impact of their opinion), therefore of the labels on the events, and the stability of the public space configuration at a certain moment in time from the point of view of the drivers of public opinion. As the mass-media brings at the debate table the same guests, who are subjective individuals with personal values and ideological visions remaining relatively stable on an individual life scale, we might cautiously state that, from this perspective, the media feeds a fictional democratic space, made of compositions of points of view and predictable, redundant discourses. The hegemonic model (the media as the place of representation and expression of the dominant elite), the agenda-setting theory (mass-media as organiser, upon personal criteria, of the public agenda), the cultural studies (media content as symbol of the fight for power) and the theories of the public opinion (public opinion as part of the public space, depending on various 101

factors) are just some of the theoretic tools to bring solid arguments in favour of the statement according to which, at the level of a global effect, mass-media creates a fictive democratic space, in which only a limited number of social categories find their place and representation, frequently favouring some voices to the detriment of others. Example: the permanent guests of certain tv debate shows, mass-media opinion leaders. The Political Rating Agency has monitored the Realitatea TV and Antena 3 daily or weekly talk shows during the period 6th of September- 1st of Octomber 2011. The study aimed at identifying the leaders of opinion in Romania, which proved to be predominantly media/political analysts and trade unionists. The conclusions of the study show that: the politicians represent 58,7% of the total of guests, the journalists and commentators 25,3%, and the trade unions and employers 16%; the ratio of trade unions/ employers is unbalanced: 41/9; out of 81 commentators present on TV, 45 of them are journalists and media analysts, 7 are representatives of NGOs, 27 are experts (lawyers, psychologists, economists, consultants, political analysts) and 2 specialists of the NBR. According to the same study, Mugur Ciuvic has registered the most frequent apparitions on TV during the monitored period: 26, being declared the leader of opinion on the news channels in Romania44.
Bibliography Aniei, Mihai, 2010, Fundamentele Psihologiei, Bucureti, Editura Universitar Blescu, Mdlina, 2003, Manual de producie n televiziune, Iai, Polirom Berkowitz, Dan-coord., 1997, Social Meaning of News. Sage Publications Inc. Defleur, Melvin, Ball-Rokeach, Sandra, 1999, Teorii ale comunicrii de mas, Iai, Polirom Dicionarul Explicativ al Limbii Romne, 1998, Bucureti, Univers Enciclopedic, ediia a doua Fishman, Mark, 1980, Manufacturing the news, Austin, University of Texas Press Giles, Robert H., 1995, Newsroom management, Detroit, Media Management Books, Inc. Marinescu, Valentina, 2011, Introducere n Teoria Comunicrii-Modele i aplicaii, Bucureti, Editura C. H. Beck Mathien, Michel,1989, Le systeme mediatique, Paris, HachetteMcQuail, Denis, 1987, MassCommunication Theory, London, Newbury Park, Beverly Hills, New Delhi, Sage Publications Molotoch, Harvey, Lester, Marylin 1997, News as Purposive Behaviour, On the Strategic Use of Routine Events, Accidents and Scandals, n Dan Berkowitz, 1997-coord, Social Meaning of News, Sage Publications Inc., pp. 193-207.Neculau, Adrian-coord, 1995, Psihologia cmpului social-Reprezentrile Sociale, Iai, Editura Polirom O Sullivan, Tim et alii, 2001, Concepte fundamentale din tiinele comunicrii i studiile culturale, Iai, Editura Polirom Pailliart, Isabelle-coord. (2002). Spaiul Public i comunicarea, Iai, Editura Polirom Rieffel, Remy, 2008, Sociologia spaiului public, Iai, Polirom Roca, Luminia, 2004, Producia textului jurnalistic, Iai, Polirom Shoemaker, Pamela J., Reese, Stephen D., 1997, Mediating the message-Theories of Influences on Mass-media Content, Longman Publishers, ediia a doua Stuart, Allan, 1999, News Culture, Buckingham, Open University Press Zamfir, Ctlin, Vlsceanu, Lazr, 1999, Dicionar de Sociologie, Bucureti, Editura Turnul Babel Web sources: www.adevarul.ro http://verticalnews.ro/mugur-ciuvica-si-monica-tatoiu-cei-mai-toxici-romani/ http://monitorul.com.ro/local/cine-sint-liderii-de-opinie-din-romania-doar-4-parlamentari-de-iasiau-aparut-la-tv-urile-centrale-16262.html http://calinhera.blogspot.ro/2010/10/visez-un-tlakshow-la-coltu-strazii-ca.html http://www.adevarul.ro/locale/bucuresti/DEZBATERE_Care_este_cea_mai_-sufocanta_aparitie_de_la_TV_0_519548626.html
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Romanian Amateur Fiction in the age of New Media

Bianca Marina Mitu - University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

The Internet has opened up many opportunities for publishers, editors and amateur writers through its capacity of creating communities. The online literary communities empower the amateurs as writers. This article aims to evaluate the Romanian online fiction websites and to provide insights into the ways of constructing amateur fiction online. The present study also aims to offer a large perspective on an emergent phenomenon, that of the expansion of the Romanian literary online communities and the practices used by these communities to engage the people in their activities. The article introduces a new topic among scholars and could become subject to wider debates at national and global level. Introduction There can be no future without a past and the books are considered testimonials of the past. In the age of new media the books are gradually becoming an extension of the past rather than a part of the future of the new generations. The development of television and Internet, which are based on interactivity, has changed the behaviors and the hierarchies for the new generations. The reading is today replaced by watching television or surfing on the Internet, activities that are much more attractive and easier to deal with. Levinson (1998) states that cultural stability is today damaged by the development of what he calls the network beeings, people driven by the pleasure of surfing. The author identifies three main generations: the generation of the book, the television generation and the electronic generation of web surfing. However the book continues to own an important place in peoples lives even if reading books in the age of new media occupies a minor place in comparison to the use of electronic media (Levinson, 1998, after Drgan, 2007: 713). The impressive transformation brought by the development of the new technologies of communication had major effects on the entire society and also on the book publishing industry. Taking into consideration that the Internet has become a normal feature of everyday life, shaping the way things get done in just about every sector of society (Dahlgren, 2009: 152), in order to resist, books had to adapt. Todays books have moved on the Internet and also the writing has moved online. Many amateur writers are hoping to reach success by publishing their literary works on the Internet. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the Romanian online fiction websites and to provide insights into the ways of constructing amateur fiction online. The paper also aims to offer a large perspective on an emergent phenomenon, that of the expansion of the Romanian literary online communities. The core argument of this study is that amateur writers are willing to engage via different literary websites or to become members of an online community as long as a series of terms and conditions are met that would make this engagement meaningful to them. These include the existence of visible benefits such as: publication, distribution, feedback, new contacts or being recognized in the community. We have as a starting point the technological determinism theory, who states that media technology has the power to shape the way that individuals feel, think or act and the way that the society as a whole functions while moving from one technological age to another (such as: tribal, literate, print, electronic). Marshall McLuhans (1962) theory focuses on the importance of the medium, asserting that people feel, act and think according to the messages they receive through the current media technology they use. McLuhan considers that the new technologies of communication are changing the human senses, the people and the entire society. The technological determinism theory has been developed in the context of the exploration of the psychological, anthropological, economical, political and cultural impact of the media on society and explains 103

everything in the light of medias relation to the technological developments. The most important media determinists who embraced this theory are the Canadian scholars, such as: Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Derrick de Kerckhove, Edmonto Alberto, Paul Levinson, Joshua Meyrowitz. Internet and Online Communities The new technologies of communication have the power to reshape all the domains of society and also reshape peoples lives, as Sonia Livingstone states We can no longer imagine living our daily lives- at leisure or at work, with family or friends- without media and communication technologies. Nor would we want to. As we enter the twenty-first century, the home is being transformed into the site of a multimedia culture, integrating audiovisual, information and telecommunications services (Livingstone, 2002: 1). Since the new media has emerged in the research agenda of scholars there has always been a controversial dispute regarding the comparison between the advantages and disadvantages of old media and new media (Jenkins, 2006) in the contemporary society. Although, both are able to reach small or large audiences, there have been identified many fundamental differences in terms of distribution, production and technology. The new communication medium, basically, often separates the direct and mutual observation of the communicative participants. Opposed to the traditional face to face talking, the utterance is de-contextualized and therefore needs to be recontextualized by the receiver in order to be understood. Hence, the written word gains a context-independent existence. Sonia Livingstone (2002) presents four themes that suggest how new media contribute to the changing of todays social environment: 1. familiar media are being used in new arrangements of space and time 2. media are diversifying in form and contents, resulting in local and global, general and specialized television channels, in diverse kinds of computer and video game, and so forth 3. emerging screens technologies contribute to convergence across hitherto distinct social boundaries 4. the radical change is the shift from one-way mass communication towards more interactive communication between medium and user (Livingstone, 2002: 19-20). For a clarification of the terms old media and new media we believe that it necessary to integrate some of the differences between them into the following table. Table 1. Old, Written Media versus New, Digital Media
Old, written media Industrial media dominantly produced by large multinational corporations Linear, One-way media Reaches the audience Brings forward the content Passive users - Users as Recipients and Consumers of Media Content Static media One-sided platform distribution New, digital media Personal media primarily produced by internet users Interactive media Connects the audience and with the audience Brings forward the user Active users - Users as participants and Creators of Media Content Mobile media More diversified multi-platform (hypermedia and multimedia) distribution Less available and accessible to the public, Generally available and freely accessible to the distribution costs and therefore reading public at little or no cost becomes more expensive for the public The time to obtain a feedback can be very long Capable of instantaneous feedback (days, weeks, or even months) Once created, cannot be altered (once a Easily altered. Provides instant editing and newspaper article is printed and distributed, the instant writing comments journalist does not have the possibility to make more changes to that article)

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Storage capacity for media content is relatively low because archives are necessary Low level of content categorization and sharing of content Less peer-to-peer power Publisher-Centric Less creative content creation

Storage capacity for media content is very high It is an online database High level of content categorization, annotation and sharing at any time More peer-to-peer power User-Centric Model UGC User generated content More creative content creation

Romania has officially become connected to the Internet on February 26, 1993, when the domain .ro was created and recognized by the Internet Asignement Numbers Authority. Today the Internet is used both in urban and in rural areas, but there are still a lot of Romanian people who do not have acces to the Internet. The Internet has opened up many opportunities for people to gain information and keep in touch with other people that share same interests. Although the Romanian people begun using the Internet later than other European countries, they have managed to overreach the historical gap caused by the Communist Regime. Therefore, after 2003 people begun more and more interested and technologically educated and begun creating online communities. The idea of an online or virtual community is not new. It was pushed forward by Howard Rheingold, who offered one of the first definitions of such communities as social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace (Rheingold, 2000: xx). This definition focuses on the affective aspect, considering that the online communities are built through affective investment. The same suggestion makes Shawn Wilbur who also sees emotional engagement as an essential element: for those who doubt the possibility of online intimacy, I can only speak ofhours sitting at my keyboard with tears streaming down my face, or convulsed with laughter (Wilbur, 1997: 18). Leila Green also focuses on engagement when she states that communities depend on individuals engaging with the general exchanges, projecting themselves and their identity in an ongoing conversation (Green, 2010: 148). Other authors rather than coming up with a specific definition of online communities, they preferred to focus on defining the concept by prototypical attributes, so that communities with more of these attributes were clearer examples of communities than those that had fewer (Whittaker et al., 1997). The core attributes of online communities that Whittaker et al. (1997) identified are as follows: - online community members need to have some shared goal, interest, or activity that provides the primary reason for belonging to the community - members engage in repeated active participation and there are often intense interactions, strong emotional ties and shared activities occurring between participants - members have access to shared resources and there are policies for determining access to those resources - support and services between members as part of their community interaction. - a shared context (such as social conventions, language, protocols). In the same manner, another author, Preece (2000) defines an online community as containing the following four components: social interaction a shared purpose a common set of expected behaviors forms of computer system which facilitate communication. Romanian Fiction Online Analyzing the online Romanian medium we find that Romanian literary online communities are an expanding category among the other Romanian online communities. We find four different types of websites that concern with fiction: 105

online amateur writers communities, such as: www.bocanculliterar.ro, www.europeea.ro, www.rostiri.ning.com, www.egophobia.ro, www.proza.ro, www.hyperliteratura.ro, www.agonia.net, www.agonia.ro ,

www.bookaholic.ro, www.LiterNet.ro, www.creatieliterara.pasiune.eu

This websites offer great possibilities for young writers to publish their work and get feedback. The number of members that join these communities is impressive and it is growing every month. Even so, these online communities are considered rather small, each one having between 1200 and 3000 members. These literary communities use many practices in order to engage people and to provoke them to become members of the community. On their web pages we find literary contests, the possibility to vote for the favorite piece of literary work, advices for young writers, advices and opportunities for publishing and so on. We observe that only two of the analyzed websites have an English version (Figure 1 and 2) and this particular situation makes us state that these writers address mostly to the national rather than international audience.
Figure 1. www.egophobia.ro English Version

Figure 2. www.agonia.net English Version

We also notice that the online writers prefer to sign their articles with their real name, while others prefer to choose a pseudonym and remain unknown.

fan fiction online communities: www.educat.ro (Harry Potter Romanian online community), http://startrekro.wordpress.com (StarTrek Romanian online community) 106

These online communities websites contain news, contests, fan clubs, online games, latest information about the characters, actors and films relevant for the community.

literary forums: http://forum.softpedia.com/index.php?showtopic=806799, http://forum.ioanistrate.ro/archive/index.php/t-4762.html, www.delibris.net amateur writers blogs: www.atelier-literar.blogspot.ro, http://www.cititorsf.ro/povestire-costigurgu/, http://dandobos.ro/, http://anaveronica.wordpress.com/povestir i-sf-f/, http://tesatorul.blogspot.ro/, http://michaelhaulica.wordpress.com/about /, http://sczeller.blogspot.ro/, http://fansf.wordpress.com/, http://www.toateblogurile.ro/blog/14330/al exandru-dan-gothic-fantasy-non-fictiune, http://losty88.wordpress.com/tag/fictiune/,

http://mikaella15.wordpress.com/category/ carti/fictiune/, http://poetamariabarbu.wordpress.com/cat egory/fictiune/, http://thesearchforsomethingmore.wordpre ss.com/2011/09/28/doneaza-citind-intrain-clubul-de-fictiune-all/, http://andreeamatei12.wordpress.com/tag/f ictiune/, http://blog.serialreaders.com/, http://blogenciclopedic02.blogspot.ro/2011 /12/invizibilitatea-candva-fictiune-in.html, http://gazetino.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/ aproape-fictiune/

It is well known that blogs offer a great freedom, they can be written by anyone. For the writers it is important to receive feedback, the help of other people is essential in producing a qualitative piece of writing. These blogs allow people to express their opinion regarding the pieces of fiction published by the amateur writers. Also these blogs are able to help aspiring writers with limited promotion budgets to meet others and to make useful contacts. Also, the blogs are creating online communities that gather together people that have the same interest in fiction.

online literary magazines: http://www.sci-fi.ro/, http://fanzin.clubsf.ro/category/carti-sfhttp://revistanautilus.ro/, and-f/ . Most of the Romanian authors who publish on the websites that are the subject of this analysis are hobbyist orientated, writing for fun and because of their interest in the source material. These amateur writers are more motivated freely to share their works since that in itself is their main goal, to gain an online identity as writers. The development of the Internet in Romania has also brought changes in electronic publishing. The ease of electronic publication has lead to a massive migration to the Internet. Taking advantages of the reduced costs that publishing on the Internet demands, the amateur writers have embraced the new means of online distribution of their literary works. Analyzing the literary websites we find two types of amateur writing available online: original fiction and fan fiction. Fiction is a social convention (Schaeffer, 1999: 26). Only in fiction we are able to live many realities that are much more difficult than those we face in everyday life, but the fiction can help us recognize similar situations in everyday life, protecting us

107

from the consequences (Schaeffer, 1999: 86). Some scholars define fiction by opposing it to journalistic writing, usually viewed as non-fiction (Underwood, 2008). The non-fiction is the opposite of fiction dealing with real people, events and places. Frus (1994) considers that journalistic writing is tied to everyday life and is thus hampered by its pragmatic function, which is to provide information, and therefore the journalistic writing is in contrast to fictions imaginative freedom and creativity, journalism is discursive and mundane. It is objective where fiction is subjective, and more like science than literature in its transparent, rather than self-conscious, form (Frus, 1994: 2). In this perspective, Frus contends that the contemporary blending of the traditional categories of fiction and non-fiction have made the division between the two become problematic and it may be time to reconsider the view that journalism is inherently an inferior category to fiction (Frus, 1994: 8-10, Underwood, 2008: 11-12). In the distinction we have made between the two categories of amateur fiction, original fiction and fan fiction, by the term original fiction we do not intend to imply any value considerations. Fan fiction does not lack the originality to create new stories, new characters or settings but it explores the existing, loved and famous ones. The exact definition of fan fiction has lead to a controversial dispute among scholars and has been intensely debated by both academics and by those within the fan fiction community (Derecho, 2006). Fan fiction as a concept has been attested since the 1960s with credit most often being given to the Star Trek fan community. In Convergence Culture (2006), Henry Jenkins uses the Harry Potter fan community to discuss fan fiction. Fan fiction, in its broadest form, is fiction written about some famous characters or set in a world that has been previously created by someone else. Leila Green (2010) considers that fan fiction communities do more than get together online to talk about their passion: they produce and consume materials which reinforce aspects of their fan identities, allowing them to enjoy richer, prosumer fan experiences (Green, 2010: 147). Conclusions New forms of writing, editing and broadcasting online are emerging, but these do not seem to announce that the books will disappear, as Derrick de Kerckhove also anticipates, the books will resist. The Internet is a fascinating medium and offers great potential for writers and editors. The use of the Internet as a publishing medium has advantages and disadvantages for the amateur writers. Among the advantages we find: the reduced costs of publication and distribution, the huge possibility to create unlimited archives, the visibility, the possibility to have a quick evaluation and a feedback on the published literary works, the possibility to get in touch with writers and editors from other countries, the possibility to easily create an identity as a writer. Also, the Internet succeeds to make a selection between good and poor amateur writers or literary works, usually through the number of views and comments. Amateur writers personal web pages are frequently changing address, going down temporarily for maintenance or due to bandwidth limitation or just vanishing because of the lack of interest. Therefore the Internet makes a qualitative selection of the published literary works. Regarding the disadvantages of online publishing we can notice that the online literary texts tend to become shorter. Although the Internet offers unlimited possibilities of creating archives, the online fiction writers prefer to publish short texts of maximum 3-4 pages. Therefore it becomes difficult to publish a novel on the Internet. Some amateur writers have tried to combat this trend by publishing their novels chapter by chapter but this is risky, because the online literary websites are not always visited by the same people and therefore some might find it difficult to connect the chapters. Anyway, either professional or amateur writers, in online communication networks people are all readers, but most of all, they expect to be read by others all the time. The Internet has a great potential for reconnecting the new generations with the act of reading. It is impossible to estimate the proportion of original fiction and fan fiction on the Internet but, while it still remains widely distributed, online fiction represents one of the larger global electronic libraries. Either we use traditional or electronic books, either we prefer amateur online fiction, original or fan fiction, we need to take into consideration Noicas statement you have as many lives as many books you have read. 108

Bibliography Dahlgren, Peter, (2009), Media and Political Engagement: Citizens, Communication and Democracy, New York: Cambridge University Press. Derecho, Abagail (2006), Archontic Literature: A Definition, a History and Several Theories of Fan Fiction, in Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (eds.), Fab Fiction and Fan Fiction Communities in the Age of the Internet, McFarland and Company, pp. 61-78. Drgan, Ioan (2007), Comunicarea- paradigme i teorii, Volumul I, Bucureti: Rao. Frus, Phyllis (1994), The Politics and Poetics of Journalistic Narrative: The Timely and the Timeless, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Green, Leila (2010), The Internet: An Introduction to New Media, Berg, Oxford. Jenkins, Henry (2006), Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York: New york University Press. McLuhan, Marshall (1962), The Gutenberg Galaxy: The making of Typographic Man, Toronto: University of Toronto press. Preece, Jenny (2000), Online Communities Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability, John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Rheingold, Howard. (2000), The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, also at http://www.rheingold.com/vc/; Schaeffer, Jean-Marie (1999), Pourquoi la Fiction?, col. Poetique, Seuil, Paris. Shawn Wilbur (1997), An Archaeology of Cyberspaces: Virtuality, Community, Identity, in D. Porter (ed.), Internet Culture, New York: Routledge, pp. 5-22. Underwood, Doug (2008), Journalism and the Novel: Truth and Fiction, 1700-2000, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whittaker, Steve, Isaacs, Ellen, ODay, Vicky (1997), Windening the Net: Workshop Report on the Theory and Practice of Physical and Network Communities, SIGCHI Bulletin, 29 (3).

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Fictionalization through literaturisation in the Romanian press - A historical perspectiveMarian Petcu - University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

The evolution of the Romanian journalism has been accompanied by much confusion. One of them could be summarized as follows: the journalistic discourse as a form of literary discourse or something totally different from the literary speech. Or a speech almost literary ... The fact that many writers published, very earlier, in newspapers and magazines, was the strongest argument to assert the common origin of both types of discourse, which led to the connection between journalism and literature. The polemics are justified in part by the fact that, in Romania, the separation between journalism and literature occurred relatively late, in comparison with other cultural areas. On the one hand, our press release was a hot, rich in opinions, moralistic judgments and passionate reactions. This is the area where we find, almost all the time, the writers. Its not the truth that prevails in this type of journalism, sometimes not even the arguments, but the intensity of showing that we are different from the others. The metaphorical halos and the lyrical expressions seem more important than the facts. On the other hand, the absence of journalistic education (and later, his ideology) has slowed the process of clarifying the relationship between the two occupational areas. Could this argument have somehow a history in the Romanian culture? It seems so. That is why this study presents some of the position papers about the relations between writers and journalists, as expressed in the press over the years. Journalism, a matter of talent Under the heading Literature and journalism, Tudor Teodorescu-Branite wrote in 1921: a debate arose again around the issue of writers and journalists. It's one of the issues that were discussed everywhere and especially here, where there are so few literary journalists. These disputes have always led to regrettable violence. Although the two categories of pen users work in different fields, although it would have been logic that both of them have enough space to develop, writers and journalists collide, as they would meet in the same crowded areas. Is the field of writing so tight? (...) Writers and journalists have the same target: the awakening of a rare spark deep inside the soul of the others. They use the same material: the verb, the divine verb that Caragiale was praising so passionately. The difference is that the writer creates in peace for a long time, and the journalist creates something for the next moment. The literary work lives in time. The journalistic work is about intensity (Branite, 1921,1). Here is a description of a journalistic production using the most literary means of expression - the awakening of the rare spark ...? T.T. Braniste is on this issue, several times. In 1924, for example, at the death of Robert de Jouvenel, he writes an editorial for the newspaper Adevarul (The truth), praising the deceased and bringing critics to the media detractors, the pseudo-literary writers, those who do not understand that beyond pencil and paper, between the press and literature there is no contact. Media is about objectivity, information, action. Literature involves subjectivity, contemplation, lack of action (...) but the losers of the literary caf seem to be interested in the counterculture attitude of the press . And they enthusiastically sigh for the time when newspapers appeared without telegrams (...) it seems that all these authors of unread books would like that modern newspaper the newspaper of a wireless telegraphy and of a reporter from the airplane - to be a harmless page of some old and uninteresting news, because it is... more patriarchal that way! As soon as a newspaper director assigns a section of a newspaper to a writer of our days, that section becomes the area of petty intrigues, confraternal envies, with echoes among those hundred customers from Capsa, but no impact for thousands of readers ...(Branite, 1926, 1). However, the position of T.T. Braniste regarding this question was somehow duplicitous he denied the need of the journalistic training, on several occasions, implicitly accepting that journalism is a matter of talent and attitude, where writers can be noticed and become famous. 110

Most often, the controversy was generated by the criterion of talent, that journalists were not able to prove, as some expected to happen. Whenever one brings into question the professional training of journalists, the same hypocrite speech will be promoted - one needs talent! And no school can guarantee that talent! With rare exceptions, however strange it sounds, in these terms was discussed the issue of talent in the interwar period, and even later. Which is curious, given that this was promoted by people who circulated all over the world, had information about the evolution of this profession in many countries and so on. We continue the series of reactions with two of Pamfil eicarus interventions. Trying to explain the difference between the result of the work of a reporter and of an editor, he said that, in a newspaper, the nice and good article is not the one with rich coloring pictures, but the one providing the right judgment and information. The journalistic article should supplement the reader's laziness or incapacity of judgment (eicaru, 1922, 3). Saddened by some reactions to Demetrius Tomescus proposal to claim that journalists should be more educated eicaru notes: the hostility that arose from the journalistic chests has abundantly proved the absence of relations between media and culture. If we mention the poor preparation of most journalists, that leads implicitly to an offensive reprimand. The prestige of the talent competes with the culture. Journalist may be ignorant, if only he has talent. If this condition is accomplished, he can understand a law, know geography, follow a conference on Einstein and understand the debates of civil law reform. If one puts the right adjective and use the adequate verb, regardless of the content, is there any more need to think? Is the journalistic writing only a simple proof of stylistic acrobatics? (eicaru, 1922,2). About the talent, the most commonly argument quoted, eicaru wrote later : the talent in the press is a luxury that almost all newspapers avoid, preferring energy work and various knowledge over a shining style (...) Of course, on one hand, newspapers promoting attitudes, advocating for controversial idea still appreciate talent, and, on the other hand, information newspapers appreciate the capacity of the journalist to inform (eicaru, 1926, 1). He knew exactly what he was saying he had experience as a journalist and editor, he found that readers prefer the information press to the opinion press that too often proved itself to be only a seasonal release (e.g. on the eve of elections). A voice heard, usually, by both journalists and writers was that of Nicolae Iorga. In 1923, he also feels the need to speak about the perpetuation of the religion of the talent in the press: The magazine Ramuri from Craiova publishes the following remarkable article written by the literary man and journalist who is Mr. N. Iorga: <Once again, these days, I found somewhere, told by young lips of a good and religious man, unwittingly cruel and unjust, this idea: newspaper prose. Nowadays, literature, since it has no lyrics - and Poesia itself so rarely has them! - how would it be different from the newspaper prose ... Considering the influence that the newspaper exercises daily, impossible to avoid, the newspaper would have burst into literature with its forms of neglect, the duty of a quickly writing, uncharted, uncontrolled, with a light touch of deep feelings, with its culture often incomplete or lagging behind, the most solemn truths and, especially, with the thirst of sensational, and the need that anyone understand anything, without delay, in a battle of the eyelids, for the newspaper is not meant to be read. One should not read it. This would be the explanation. And the most proud talents, the most original natures have to be aware of that : in the newspaper their writing is lazy, which is worse. So they have to pluck, to appear to be so easy to be understood (.) The newspaper reader likes only to recognize the form of the idea in it, and then why would he turn into a humble scholar of someone who would have nothing to teach him? The newspaper is in fact the literary genre - I would say precisely the kind of public expression - of our time. What doesnt fit in? And who, in a more vivid society than ours, does not reach it, then often remains in it? It is an encyclopedia, every day. What was the Summa totius theologiae for the Middle Ages is for the contemporary time the collection of a great newspaper, of true national value. And there are some newspapers where the world's pulse beats for decades. The newspaper requires no ease or negligence. It gives permission to any originality to assert. But it claims one thing: that this originality becomes social, human. To approach the humankind. And this is an education for which everyone who came in its discipline cannot be grateful enough. It is possible that in the actual literature one who has no talent hide behind the culture, promoting a specific madness. In the newspaper this is impossible. The newspaper doesnt promote the worst kind of writing. But those 111

who dont appreciate the prose in the newspaper should ask themselves if they contributed to the quality of the newspaper> (Iorga, 1923, 2). We are an immature culture, this seems to be the explanation given an editor of Dreptatea (The Justice) in 1927, speaking about this confusion: in countries of ancient culture, literary and journalistic style have set boundaries. As far as we are concerned, both of them still developing, the frequent mixing between styles is explained. The literary style becomes year after year more accurate. Each writer, with each new volume, gives his most significant and humble contribution. Nothing is superfluous - even the most unexpected figures of speech. The journalistic style is constantly growing perhaps in worse conditions. The journalists have borrowed not only words, but also foreign phrases that couldnt penetrate into literature. The clichs made their appearance. We encounter them at every step. Ugly expressions are used. For example: the fact that the government took such measures is understandable, but the fact that the opposition approves it, that's a real disgrace. And phrases are not always pondered, sometimes they cannot be read out loud. The journalistic style tends to be more unaesthetic that the conversational style. There could be an objection to this affirmation: but the journalist writes in haste, under the pressure of the editorial secretary, of the printers, of the machines, etc. The haste does not excuse a spelling mistake. It should not excuse any imperfections of style. The journalist has a duty to inform seriously and clearly. He has the duty - if it is a political newspaper - to argue and persuade. The arguments cannot do gymnastics, ready for the parade. They need agility, no superfluous ornament, only what is essential. The logic should have freedom of movement. But these movements cannot be made anyway. A distinction is always advisable (Dreptatea, 1927, 3). Well, the fact that the two styles - literary and journalistic - are growing at different speeds is not so serious. But the styles are often confused when the journalist and the writer representing two different worlds transgress one into the others field. The writers start writing too literary in newspaper and the journalists to simply in books (...) To overcome these drawbacks the journalist and the writer, even if it would be better if they remain in the appropriate field for each of them, should rise above styles and dominate them. They ought to realize that a certain word or phrase works in literature, but does not work in journalism and vice versa. These people, condemned by circumstances or spiritual impulse to write in two different genres, are obliged to acquire also two different styles: journalistic and literary. Any foray into the other's style is a loss for the writing. The persons convicted to write, not in both styles, but in both different genres without having acquired their characteristic features, have continued working, sometimes without any good evidence of knowing the mother tongue- it was room for everyone, journalism and literature. Even the institutional membership and, as we call it today, the professional adhesion (at trade unions, unions, federations) may be negotiated (Petcu, 2005, passim). It was not desired to establish criteria, rigors, and synchronization with the press in countries where there were functional rules in place in journalism and also in other fields. We are not supposed to imagine that the situation mentioned above occurred only in Bucharest, as in all areas of the country there was a tradition (...) of the presence of most writers in the press columns. The ivory towers could be counted on fingers. The great writers, the good writers and simple writers have worked for the newspapers, working every day in newsrooms (...) That explains, to a large extent, the dimension of the cultural interests for the press, noted Abramovich P. Samson, referring to the '30s - '40s (Samson, 1979, 127). Still, something was different in Romania compared to other countries - to quote again Samson we overshadowed the French and the British in terms of the production of texts of opinion: even taking into consideration the evolution of the press and the multiplication of pages dedicated to news and reportages, most newspapers focused their efforts on <the first page>, consisting entirely of articles, notes, reviews, political and cultural chain stories. Five major Romanian newspapers kept this structure, which represented, compared to the media whose goal was to inform, a higher percentage than they could find in English or French press. Why was this statistic worthy of praise, it is not mentioned in the text. However, obviously the absence of performance could be complemented by metaphor, passion, color, and writers or publicists, as often said - a journalist was, in the Romanian culture, a derogatory qualifier - could defy the natural development of European journalism: separating information and opinion texts, journalism and 112

literature, media advocacy and information media, called of large circulation or reportage press . The writer wouldnt go to the location of the event, as the reporter would. He wouldnt find out, but knew already what had happened ... therefore, he would prefer putting things into perspective, adding the right colors according to his taste and more fiction through literature. This was, unfortunately, the journalistic cafe that did not produce at the time better informed citizens, better voters. The fee of the writer was more important than the societys development, its evolution. Something about the philosophy of genres After 1945, both at the level of the JournalistsUnion, and especially in the magazine Presa Noastr (Our Press) discussions are initiated to clarify the features of press genres - which will be called, until 1990, journalistic genres, another evidence of lack of rigor. Effects can be seen again as a consequence of the lack of journalism schools, but also of the perpetuation of confusion between the two speeches, literary and journalistic. My hypothesis is that philology graduates journalists served the communist propaganda in a much greater extent than those with no philological training. After all, the propaganda needed images metaphor and ideological constructs, not only dry, concrete, non evaluative reports. Well, there were many who said they believed that an expressive and colorful writing was superior to a non evaluative, nonliterary speech. We are in a culture where the release of a story in its essential and contextual data (the essence of information journalism) did not receive positive feedback the facts reporters were (and are, unfortunately) the most despised species. This is the context in which political authority of the time accept (and even promote) the confusion between the two plans - the figures of speech have a more predictable chance to manipulate. We must accept metaphorical speeches - as we have been teached in school during the 12 years of training, when everyone, on his way from child to adult, consumes thousands of hours of fiction. The social reality defined / constructed symbolically through metaphor is a way of simplification, and also handling. No need to go into details, this time, on the issue of relations between information and opinion in the Romanian press. The first episode of the debate on the specifics of the reportage, for example, begins in 1956, when there are organized meetings between the heads of newspapers, there are published some articles and opinions are issued, more or less surprising. In all major cities there were groups of reporters operating, discussing the problem of writing, the genres, the models. For example, the literary reportage Group from the Journalists Union made great efforts to assure the participation at the debate of the most illustrious representatives of the genre, but significant progress did not appear. Geo Bogza, for example, defined the genre in terms like: What is reportage? To me, its the story of real facts, told in a realistic way (Presa noastr, 1956, 5) Paul B. Marian, after having studied the statements of Bogza, Boris Polevoi interviews, Maxim Gorkys texts, was convinced that the reportage is a literary genre used by media everywhere to portray the life and deeds of people, the events of the day. Conceptual clarifications were needed - then Romania had 2,179 journalists and related occupations! (Cornescu, 1956, 11). Let us mention here two other participants in the debate I. Felea and Dinu Hervian. For Felea, The communist journalist who is at the same time a communist writer, uses the same source of inspiration: peoples life. The communist writer, being journalist, has the same attitude towards his real heroes, whom he meets as a journalist; he approaches them with love and brother thought, to show them at work, in their family life and as citizens, with the same tools used in the literature. In newspaper life is represented in certain types of journalistic genres. In the novel or poetry, its true, something more is required. It doesnt mean that a journalist can be a novelist. But a writer, guided by the concept of socialist realism in art must be present in the pages of a new type of press, he must participate enthusiastically in building the history of our days (Felea, 1960, 26). And he provides an example of a novelist and journalist at the same time, Serban Nedelcu, praising him in a few pages. At the associative level, the slippage is just as dangerous - this is what the secretary of the Journalists Union, Hervian, says: Our Union of Journalists is a professional organization of creation (...) the journalistic writing is a literary genre. Like the painter, the journalist must choose the right colors...(Hervian, 1961,1). With such views, is it a surprise for us that newspaper headlines are battle flags of the Party? The refuse to separate the literary 113

reportage from the journalistic reportage, to treat differently journalistic and literary productions doesnt seem to have been merely evidence of ignorance, but of the interest to earn income from both areas. If the press is creative, as the literature, why do we need two associative institutions? The Writers Union and the Journalists Union. Because it happened this way in U.S.S.R., seems to be the answer. What distinguished writers of journalists? Probably just that some published more often, others more rarely. To reconcile both journalists and writers, Demostene Botez said in 1956: realistic journalism and literature are two chronicles of the times. They record at the same time, temporary or claiming the immortality, events and human faces (...) the material published in the newspaper may be the subject of an interesting novel reflecting truthfully a whole period of time. I dont understand why no novelist thought about recreating his time based on the articles and press releases, the same day. They reflect everything. This means that between journalism and realistic literature there is a close relationship (...) but newspapers dont present only the raw material for literature. The journalism has developed throughout the time a series of literary genres. The chain story, which also seems to me a literary feature, is a characteristic feature of newspapers. Heine, if not his father, is one of those who have illustrated it. The pamphlet is also a product of journalism, just like the portrait, - not to mention the reportage, that became, from a simple story, a much appreciated literary genre. The travel notes, a certain kind of science-fiction literature and also the literary chronic had flourished beginning in newspapers. It is obvious that between a newspaper and a literary book there is a difference, because the newspaper doesnt use, to the same extent that literature, the picture as a means of reproducing reality, but the fact as it happens, with the comment that convinces through logical arguments and demonstrations, in a scientific manner (...) There are a lot of writers who have began their career writing for newspapers in our country (...) young writers shouldnt consider their work for newspapers as a foreign interest of their mission as writers (Botez, 1956,3). The reportage, literary or journalistic? In 1958, the board of the magazine Presa noastr (Our Press) takes in charge the mission to clarify the status of the reportage. Here are some examples. George Vlad: I work at the Scnteia (Sparkle) newspaper, in the department of sketch stories and literary reportage department. I sometimes go out with a well defined theme (it is understood that it is imposed by editorial needs), or I look for this issue on my own (...) in any of these situations, the key issue remains the data collection (...) in the past few years the mission of the reportage (I refer especially to the literary one, which appears in daily newspapers) has changed. Therefore its task is not only to inform, but also to educate the reader. For the reportage to have an educational function, it must operate through artistic images, as, for example, the sketch, short story or novel, of course keeping the proportions (Vlad, 1956, 5). The author clarifies later the definition of the literary reportage - is that one to which I have not assisted, but I was told about. This is, for me, the story-sketch. As the operational story, up to date, whose action takes place right before our eyes, I consider that it isnt as difficult as the former, on condition that the reporter is, as one might say, all eyes and ears. In other words, the sketch reportage is a reconstruction, a false reportage, and the operational story is the journalistic reportage in the current sense. But regardless of type, to deserve its name, it has to be literary! ... In February 1958, the editors of the magazine Presa noastr claim that wanting to show the importance of frequent collaboration of the writers in newspapers pages, the magazine (...) has initiated a series of meetings to which are invited all those writers who began writing for newspapers, or who have given, over their literary activity, due attention to journalism (Presa noastr, 1958, 4). Why call the writers is easy to guess they were more prestigious than journalists, some were part of the nomenclature of the Communist Party, they appeared in textbooks. Here is the answer Zaharia Stancu gave to the question Is there a difference in the writers style in the press article and in the literature?-Yes, there is. The newspaper article is written quickly on concrete facts, its not postponed. The journalist style I speak about the true journalist - is clear, nervous. Literature requires phrases like that, and, of course, another language, according to the described 114

time, to the characters, to the actions. N. Holban believed that there are some journalists who consider the reporter as a kind of growing writer, as a man who must document for several days and - if he respects himself he must give up to two items per month! And these reports should cover at least one third of the newspaper page, or a newspaper reporter must provide information and information reportages. This is primarily his task (Presa noastr, 1958, 4). These views appear normal, but we should not rush to conclusions. For one month away, Eugene Jebeleanu ensures us that there are differences between journalistic and literary writing, but that newspaper article may have literary elements (metaphors, comparisons, etc.), as there are many writers, who are said to have no style (they are often preferred to those having style). But press article remains a press article and the literary work a literary work. Marcel Breslau, who presents himself as a writer who didnt do journalism say that the lack of this experience kept me from some inherent flaws journalistic: superfluous analysis of the document, false lyricism of many texts written on haste, relative professional indifferentism that occurs when practice changes in routine, spontaneity in tics and templates. Let me not be misunderstood, I always appreciate literature better than bad journalism.... On the other hand, Lucia Demetrius believes that journalism is a school of sincerity. Honesty has no time to run the tortuous forms, when it is expressed in poetic figures; they have almost always the gift of spontaneity and thus their price. I think I've learned, writing articles, not to be too poetic about the theme, but to go directly into it. Perhaps the best way that I would recommend to any beginner in writing is not to search, writing, the most beautiful means to express an idea, but the most direct, without thinking for a moment how it will show what it means, but only that that thing has to be understood (Presa noastr, 1958,3). Finally, a military journalist - Nicolae Tutu: the newspaper article first addresses to the persuasion on the path of reason, logically. The belief in the literature is based on the affect, on the sentiment, on the artistic emotion. But between them cannot be raised a wall of partition, insurmountable. However, the language of the newspaper article differs from pure literary style.... At the debate also participates the Hungarian writer Miklos Dano. For him, the reporter must be present, to be an eyewitness of the events. As for the literary story, and this is one of the more troubled issues, many reporters express the view that literary reportage is not only in the literary style, but in the literaturisation of the theme. In other words, the reporter loses touch with reality. Its sole willing changes facts, people and characters. He offers only a part of the reality and leaves the rest to be completed by his imagination, his qualities of writer. Thus, the reportage will create a quarter of reportage, half a sketch and a novel fragment (...) The reportage is not useful to readers. The true story is based on the most rigorous respect of the facts. The reportage actually plays a true story in a literary form. The literary character is provided by description, by choosing the typical theme, by painting complex characters, and not by letting the free play of imagination, by the literaturisation of the truth (...) in my opinion, there is no need of some fancy themes, superliteraturised, but of reportages reflecting the truth, written on a high artistic level (Dano, 1958,3). The series of media interviews from Presa noastr continues also in April 1958. This time they George Macovescu and Otilia Cazimir are asked about the relationship between journalism and literature, especially from the perspective of the reportage. Among the journalistic methods, the reportage is of central importance, says Macovescu, the reportage reflects what is more typical and significant in the daily kaleidoscope of the present. Presenting aspects like colors or ideas, geography or politics, economics or culture, the reportage embraces an infinite number of aspects of life, seen in its dialectic development, in the circumstances of time and space whose infinite variety is also infinite (...) the story is directly the journalistic product of the events, the immediate reflex of life in its many forms (Ivacu, 1958,1). And to be clearer, a newspaper article builds on logical demonstration, while the literary work is a succession of artistic images. The difference is obvious and it is reflected in the style (...) there is a newspaper article style, journalism style. Great journalists without being at the same time creators of art - have their style, a journalistic style and not a literary one. How is this style? Let us study the great journalists and ... especially journalists who have contributed to it. Maybe time has come for journalism to exist by itself and not as a poorer or richer relative of the literature. I think so says Macovescu. The writer Otilia Cazimir says: writing daily and for everyone, means looking in the first place the concise sentence , the direct word and the practical meaning: a man who reads the 115

newspaper in the tramway or in work break, has no time to literature. Thats why I become so angry (and it exasperates me sometimes) seeing the reportages that go crazy, by far, with detours and unnecessary incursions through folklore, only to finally say, in a confused and vague way, which had to be said at first, shortly and clearly. Because journalism is life, while the literature is ... literature (Cazimir, 1958,1). To clarify once and for all (?) the confusion on the reportage, the authorities of Bucharest held in 1958 what was called the International Meeting of the reporters. A lot of money has been spent, it was useful to propaganda, but has not made a concrete result, in the way of clarifying the relationship between the two occupational areas: journalism and literature. A possible explanation seems to be the fact that most participants came from socialist countries. There, the professional guides were the Soviet Pravda newspaper (and the Sovietskaia Peciati magazine). The confusion we are talking about was fueled not only by the ignorance of our journalists, but also by the uninspired imitation, copying the Soviet model. In 1959, some conferences are held at the Journalists Union, the theme is how the press supports the agriculture, the newspapers graphics, thepatriotic and internationalist education of the working people, the communist figure in the reportage with Victor Brldeanu as reviewer (at the reportage Group). That year obsessively continued the debate on the of literature delimitation from journalism, a debate selectively reflected in the Union magazine, Presa noastr (Our Press). For example, under the heading Notes on the reportage, Toma George Maiorescu, testified that the reportage school is the fiction school. The reporter is, at least potentially, a writer. About the long and controversial dispute over reportage as a genre, I rather believe that the reportage is literature. Someone will protest: all right, but literature is about fiction. It's true. But a less rigid and circumscribed understanding of fiction, it appears clearly that the selection process itself, the choice and the compositional arrangement of the material of life, is part of the fiction. The purpose of literature is human life, the accurate reflection of its complex and irreversible processes, in other words, the reflection of life. Does the report has the same object? (Maiorescu, 1959,2). Horia Bratu holds a similar view - the limit of the literary reportage area is not easily predictable. Its factual content is not fundamentally different from the content of journalistic reportage. However, the literary reportage embraces otherwise the facts. For example, an innovative personality is presented in the literary reportage not only in a veridical way, but also with an artistic characterization (his physical portrait), the moral character is pointed out, the originality of the innovators behavior appears very clearly (...) literary reportage are thus between journalism and literature. The reportage, a genre invented by journalists, had long before been seized by writers, for so long that its origins had been forgotten (?). This is, of course, false. Those who participated in such clarifications have not explained anything in the last hundred years (instead they amplified the confusion), were educated people. There is a difference between saying what you saw (the journalistic reportage) and saying what you felt (the literary reportage). The debate involved a little more lucid person - Victor Nmolaru, the Editorial Office for foreign publications representative, who says that the success of the magazines he worked for is explained as following: from the very beginning was combated the misconception that there was accredited in mind of some editorial workers, that the journalistic writing is synonymous with surface effects, with many twists and turns of phrase and shaped fireworks. No! Journalism is not really conceivable without wide use of all journalistic genres, as it requires a large variety of genres, but this has nothing to do with flowers of speech, or with false literaturisation! Journalism is not only a problem of form (...) but, above all, a problem of content, of themes (...) the need to focus on the facts is the first step, the next, and not least, is to put man at the center of our materials, the man as a creator of new life, the passionate and daring builder who, educated by the party, does not give up when obstacles and difficulties appear, fighting tirelessly for the triumph of the new (Nmolaru, 1959, 23). Numerous discussions, conferences, articles will turn on all sides the same issue of separating the journalistic speech from the elements of the literary expression. Without noticeable effects, however. Meanwhile a school of journalism in Bucharest (1951) is funded, dominated by philologists, who after several years and will be dissolved. This experience does not cause synchronization of local journalism with a more stable press, like the one from other countries, the 116

Polish or Czechoslovak one, if we refer exclusively to the socialist camp. Again, the Communist Party propagandists didnt need authentic journalists, with reflexes, doubts, with the sense of justice. Or propaganda, it is well known, is more effective if you deal with images, with tenderness, with metaphors, if you use artists on the ideological front, not journalists. Therefore, the confusion was maintained for political and, lets recognize it, financial reasons. Here are the opinions of an experienced journalist, who had known the market journalism (capitalist), but also the communist one - Tudor T. Braniste. In an interview for Luceafarul (The Star) magazine granted to Valeriu Rpeanu (1963), answering the question do you think there is a distinction between the style of the literary reportage and of the newspaper article? Braniste said: Today, at the level reached by the press, we can no longer make a categorical distinction between the style of the reportage and the newspaper article on the one hand and the literary style on the other (...) I do not mean that any reportage is literature and any literature page is reportage. The genres are still different, but their connection is obvious and indisputable. Each time the press has used first hand elements (Eminescu, Iorga), its pages were high quality (Branite, 1976, 140). Well, but how to get multiples of Eminescu and Iorga in the Romanian culture? We seem to be in a pathologic area, in a difficult to explain myopia that affects the most assessors of the relationship between literature and journalism. Its not comparable what Eminescu and Iorga left as a legacy, with thousands of unread texts produced by those who fed from the confusion which is the subject of study. In June 1965, the editorial committee of the only magazine of professional culture, Presa noastr (Our Press), debates the issue of the information press. Here are some of the positions of important journalists of that time. Henri Dona, senior editor of Flacara (The Flame) and professor at the Faculty of Journalism, says that there is a publishing genre which is well defined, the information, and that do not deliver information and news in an indirect way, but directly. Why indirect remains unclear, however, says Dona in the information genres we can place the interview and the investigation, the note, the information reportage, not just the news. In fact, to translate somehow what the teacher in journalism from the University of Bucharest says, in the area of the information genres stand as well the interview, the survey, the note, the information story - although the sequence should start with the news, the journalists basics. Why was this genre publicist and not journalistic, as they said then? In order to not offend those who thought the journalist profession was less than that of writer, publisher. Somehow more clearly, Virgil Danciulescu from Romnia liber (Free Romania) stated that the most common forms of information as journalistic genre used in the newspaper are, as it is known in theory and practice of media, the news, note, report, interview, investigation, statement , reportage(...) the most common is the news. It was difficult to understand how journalistic production can be divided into two major types - information and opinion, with their divisions. But this was the education level of some of our journalists. On the same occasion, Dumitru Tabacu from Romania libera (Free Romania), for example, insists on publishing a handbook - we must all cooperate to be in possession of a manual to clarify these specific terms of our wok. Now its time to start the serious work and have for us and for comrades in the future of this profession a greater clarification about the journalistic genres. And Znel Florea from Agerpres thought (as well as other participants) that the practice of the information literaturisation should end. Nobody could produce a manual at that time, for reasons easy to guess - none of the thousands talented journalists and writers Romania had, clarified for himself the problem of genres. As for the no-literaturisation of the journalism, given that about 90 percent of journalists had literature as their scientific origin, it was out of the question. Especially since literal expression had more space in the newspaper or the magazine, which means to discharge the duties of office working less - more information means more work. Nothing about this aspect was ever honestly discussed, unfortunately. In 1965 continued the debates about the reportage its nature, its use... Serban Cioculescu wrote that the reportage emergence is related to the occurrence of journalism, whose original purpose was no other than to inform the widest possible audience (...) there is, for the reporter, a desire to rise in terms of literary expression. This ambition seems natural (...) writers, novelists or dramatists are not considered complete if the reality reflected in their work is not seen to some extent at an angle of poetic transfiguration (Presa noastr, 1965, 45). It is true, painfully true 117

which Cioculescu says. But who would have taken him into consideration? For Paul Anghel, the reporter is like a electrical conductor and the direction is the social order. But what is this social order? What the Communist Party decides, of course. Ion Baiesu said that there is only one kind of reportage the interesting one. He does not believe in the coexistence of two categories literary reportage and journalistic reportage. The literary one is a hybrid genre, unnecessarily and endangered. Flora uteu also granted an interview to Presa noastr magazine, complaining about the excess of affection of local journalism reportages and serials are a kind of meeting points of journalism and literature. Written with nerve, often in metaphorical language, the newspaper columns put dry and impersonal information in a commentary that sets it apart. Borrowing methods of literary expression, journalists try so their literary pen, inventing figures of speech for daily facts. But, says the author, in all that the measure must be maintained, otherwise are created texts as Blan - city whose coordinates take us not far from Olt sources, in the Ciuc beautiful depression (Steaua roie The Red Star, Trgu Mure, no. 112). Or twenty-four years ago, when I started travelling from peak to peak, from Rarau to Stanisoara, we never thought that going through this wilderness of water, I put my footstep on the backbone of a future high industrial significance (Zori noi New Dawn, Suceava, no. 5420). As can be seen, readers do not appear at all in this dispute, precisely those who paid the writers and the journalists. We are in an era of supply media, not of demand media one reads what the party decides, its not an individual choice. Were they totally ignorant, the decision factors of the two creative unions? No they were travelling in many countries (capitalist and communist), had access to the media in many countries, they had journalism textbooks from USA, France, Germany, Poland .There was nowhere this strange combination. Who paid the costs of encouraging the journalists to try their literary pen? Nobody seemed to know. Here is the context in which the journalist Sergiu Frcan published in Presa noastr (Our Press) for several months, How to gather news and how to write them , taking pages of How to report the news and write, by Laurence R. Campbell and Roland E. Wolseley, printed in the USA (1961). To enable the printing of such a text, Frcan shows that recent documents of the party and the article of Comrade Nicolae Ceauescu about the party leadership role underlines the urgent need of job knowledge, of all the best that has been created in various fields, here and abroad. We are also warned against the pragmatism which will not take into account the scientific knowledge. It was a desperate attitude, we might say - it seems that no one sincerely wished to clarify the relationship between fiction and reality, between literature and journalism. In other words, a double lie was perpetuated first, about the content of the reports and second, about the form in which events were packed. Lets not forget that we were in an era where reality was deeply marked by the official ideology and metaphor served to the propaganda more than news. By definition, the news is not a landscape! Or journalistic discourse seems to be glorifying, that means literary. We continue this sequence of reactions, judgments and clarifying searches with Al. Philippide, who was to declare: we can say, with considerable justice, that the differences between journalism and literature are deep. First, by their nature. Literature is art. So its a spirit game which must first of all be pleasant. Any kind of literature must have this character (...) Journalism is not art. There is not a simple game (at least in essence). It doesnt necessarily claim to please. Journalism proceeds of another need. The need for information. So it meets the individual's social curiosity. And it fulfills a social function (...) to write good literature and to write well in journalism are two things that do not always fit together. Literary style does not coincide with the journalistic style. A newspaper article written only in a literary way is a mediocre article, as well as mediocre is also a piece of literature written only in a journalistic way. Journalistic style requires some qualities that literature does not need immediately. It requires first accuracy and fastness... (Phillipide, 1970, 5). And George Macovescu is bothered by the literaturisation practiced in the press - serious things that require a certain style, a certain precision and seriousness, (can be) dressed in a coat ... totally unfit, if they are expressed literally. But lets see what an appreciated journalist of the moment, Snziana Pop says: Journalism is a field of art and it has aesthetic rigors as well as literature. Journalism is a matter of vocation 118

and talent is a matter of discipline and profession. Publicity not can be judged in comparison with the literature and as the literature, it does not exclude beautiful, on the contrary, it involves it, it is even conditioned by beauty. If literature is an evolution, a judgment value with the force of generalization, the journalism records time, the immediate actuality, a judgment value daily (Pop, 1970, 1). Dictionaries say that the publicist is the person who publishes political, social, cultural works, but also a person who publishes articles in the press; sometimes, the dictionaries define the publicist as a writer dealing with journalism. In any case, the publicist is not synonymous with a journalist, employed in a newsroom and living on journalism income. Finally, the term itself deserves a careful analysis. Back to Snziana Pops text, summarizing: journalism involves beauty and judgment value, it has aesthetic rigors, as literature; it is a matter of vocation and talent, that is exactly what happens in literature. Further, the author states that literature implies selection, capacity of transfiguration, the very act of creation is a symbol. Journalism involves the whole. It can and should tell all. One of the great beauties of journalism is this settlement in the whole reality, this difficult, but exceptional requirement to express about everything. One of the great satisfactions of the journalist is to have at hand the enormous reality, to imagine its huge being and to dare to call it, to subject it in a few pages of newspaper (...) Journalism is not a no rigor field, but an area with other rigors then those of literature, a field with more labile legislation, with more flexible laws than fiction, but with laws! With canons! If there is still poor journalism, its only because there is this false and pernicious impression of total freedom, of natural writing. Very false and very dangerous. The only difference between journalism and literature in terms of writing discipline is putting them under the influence of different rules, but these rigors exist, they are mandatory, recognizable! Thats why today, more than ever, it is necessary to discuss the journalism aesthetics, to give an important role to the idea of talent and profession in publishing (...) What is talent? (...) talent is work, talent is effort, talent is the discipline of writing. I do know for sure, talent is not the end but the beginning of the road, we all start by having the talent and we end up professionalize the talent by the discipline and subject it to eternity...(Pop,1970,1). Here there are, in the text above, several demonstrations. One of them consists in the fact that journalism, with its labile laws, flexible - compared to fiction - is inferior to literature. In other words, one grows through literature and regresses through journalism in the culture to which one belongs. This representation is strange, damaging and widespread. That explains why we have not had a genuine information press and why very few wanted to remain in the collective memory as journalists publicist, writer is infinitely more. A comparative history of journalism in European countries would show how unusual, not to say ridiculous, was the hierarchy of the two areas and the damages caused by the writers who didnt allow to journalism to evolve independently, to grow and to synchronize with what was happening in more settled countries, so to speak. We wonder if journalism has ceased to be a matter of talent, and has become a matter of style...An attempt to find an explanation and reconciliation tries, in 1971, Silvian Ionescu in his book, The frontier literature: hunting for sensational produced immeasurable amounts of antiliterature, of bold deeds, reproduced with outrageous comments. It was, however, a huge reservoir where the literature has found suggestions, an infinite spectrum of relationships, reactions, situations. There are a lot of writers who have used the diverse fact, achieving memorable results (...) sensational information represented - even if that is not entirely flattering a crossing point to literary reportage (...) at first sight is difficult to speak about the establishment of a journalistic style with its own structure. There are many styles, different stages (...)The style barometer of the press was and remains sensitive, scoring models to literary pastiche. At the bottom, some figures of speech, rejected by the literature, survive in the press. But we cannot judge the press style after the newspaper template. Controversial influences are easily found. The newspaper styles had memorable impact on the literature (...) Gradually, the modern media of information, more hostile to verbalism and literary exercises - which took refuge in the mediocre reportage - capitalized the retention and the almost telegraphic brevity(Ionescu, 1971, 308). Here is the voice of a journalist who knew the interwar media, but also the communist one: Nicolae Carandino. He would declare: journalism is creative to the extent that any written and 119

printed activity is creative, but the media is of course a separate sector from literature, having often key differences. I mean the role of the present in journalism field is essential (...) For a regular reader, journalism is a very general creation, but for a practitioner areas it carries enough trouble that often require contradictory qualities. Theres a difference, in the press, between being an article writer and picking up news (...) in the press is more pleasant the one who knows how to save adjectives and metaphors, one who knows how to give an incandescent lyricism to the current verb. The idea - and journalism is an idea a day - does not need the support of false rhetoric (Carandino, 1989, 3). I asked N. Carandino, even at the first meeting (1992), which is the journalists life ideal, in his opinion. The answer was not to deny reality ... So, neither the stream of opinions more or less legitimate, nor the intensity of the controversy, metaphors or imagination, but reality seems to be the journalists right measure. Something so simple, but so hard to understand. What literature can you see in the news or in an interview? - ironically answered Nestor Ignat - I have been sustaining for over 30 years that journalistic work is nonliterary. I also published a study in this respect, in Greece . Well, I said, but as Dean of the Faculty of Journalism, you have tolerated this confusion, excessive literary curricula. Then, there was nobody to teach! But lets go back to the story and follow the opinion of a journalism professor, Marin Stoian. According to him, the reportage would be a journalistic genre that meets the following qualities: up to date, authenticity it implies the presence of journalists at the event; attitude requires emotional participation of the reporter and call the reader's affection, plasticity, the strong emphasis of the significant elements in the reportage, which is being done when the reporter uses the means and procedures related to literary composition - narration, dialogue, portrait -, the artistic image - metaphor, comparison, hyperbole -, style - lyricism, irony, dynamism, vocabulary. Therefore, the reportage requires literary talent (...) But if the many victories of the reportage are related to the neighborhood with literature, this is also the source of its many failures. Going on regressive ways, the plasticity became color and the beautiful and brilliant color was poorly understood; therefore, the reportage is often stuck in peripheral areas of interest, removing the reporter from his true role (Stoian, 1987, 99). After searching several bibliographical sources, the author proposes a definition of the reportage: the journalistic genre relating with literary means, in terms of personal attitudes, genuine events that have immediate echo in actuality. To strengthen the theoretical position, the author takes one of Mihai Stoian's opinions, that the strength and attractiveness of the reportage lies, however, in a kind of deliberate, systematic <deformation> of the nude reality, which makes that event, that character (the heroes of the reportage) signify and serve the surrounding reality, from a particular perspective and also generally valid (Stoian, 1987, 101). Here is the well expressed imperative - the reporter should serve the surrounding reality, tuned to the indications of the propaganda, to twist reality according to it, to promote heroes of socialist construction. In any case, do not relate nude reality. It is one of the basic postulates of communist journalism, defined by V.I. Lenin many decades ago. I conclude this series with another response of a journalist who practiced journalism before and after the communist government, Paul Lzrescu: the truth is that many writers have worked at newspapers. But remember that not all fueled confusion - read Nicolae Carandinos articles and you will not find an adjective! And he is not the only one. Was it myopia? Was it ignorance? Would earning money have been so important for the writers who published in the press, that truth may not have mattered? Perhaps, some of each.

Bibliography Botez, 1956: Demostene Botez, Journalism and literature, in Presa noastr, year I, no. 2, June 1956, pages 3-4. Braniste, 1921: Andrei Branite, Literature and journalism, in Adevrul, 29 September 1921, page 1.

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Braniste, 1924: T. T. Branite, Between press and literature, in Cuvntul liber, 26 july 1924, pages. 1-3, Braniste, 1976: Tudor Teodorescu Branite, Scara vietii / The scale of life, edition by Constantin Darie, Eminescu Publishing House, Bucarest, 1976, page 140. Braniste, 1989: Tudor Teodorescu-Branite, Intre presa si literatura, Between press and literature, ediion by Constantin Darie and Paul Ion Teodorescu, tome I, Minerva Publishing House, Bucureti, 1989. Carandino, 1989: N. Carandino, Journalism does not need the support of false rhetoric, in Tineretul liber. Supliment literar-artistic, year I, no. 1, 30 December 1989, page 3 (interview from 1986). Cornescu, 1956: Al. Cornescu, After one year of activity, in Presa noastr, year I, no. 8, December 1956. Danos, 1958: Dano Miklo, Three of many problems, in Presa noastr, the monthly magazine of the Journalists Union, year III, no. 3 (23), March, 1958, pages 3-10 Hervian,1961: Dinu Hervian, Our local unions and the Journalists Union tasks, in Presa noastr, year VI, no. 12 (68), December 1961, page 1 Ionescu, 1971: Silvian Ionescu, Literatura de frontier/ The frontier literature, II nd edition reviewed, Editura enciclopedic romn, Bucarest, 1971, page 308 Iorga, 1923: Nicolae Iorga, The movement of ideas. Newspaper prose, in Adevrul, year XXXVI, no 12.138, 22 April 1923, page 2 (text in Adevrul from Ramuri magazine). Ivascu, 1958: George Ivacu, The international reunion of the reporters, in Presa noastr, the monthly magazine of the Journalists Union, year III, no. 4 (24), April, 1958, page 1 Maiorescu, 1959: Toma George Maiorescu, Notes on the reportage, in Presa noastr, year IV, no. 3-4 (35-36), March-April 1959, page 2 Petcu, 2005: Marian Petcu, Jurnalist in Romania / Journalist in Romania- the history of a profession, Comunicare.ro Publishing House, Bucarest, 2005. Philippide, 1970: Al. Philippide, Journalism and literature, in Presa noastr, year XV, no. 10 (174), October 1970, pages 5-8. Pop, 1970: Snziana Pop, Publishing-talent, discipline, profession, in Presa noastr, no. 11(175), year XV, november 1970, page 1. Samson, 1979: A.P. Samson, Memoriile unui ziarist / The memories of a journalist, Cartea Romneasc Publishin House, Bucarest, 1979, page 127. Seicaru, 1922: Pamfil eicaru, After the congress of the press press, liberty and culture, in Hiena, year III, no. 10, 17 December 1922, page 3. Seicaru, 1926: Pamfil eicaru, Press and culture i cultura, in Cuvntul newspaper, year III, no. 381, 13 February1926, page 1. Stoian,1987: Marin Stoian, The reportage in the print media, in Elemente de teoria presei /Elementes of the press theory, tome II, Academy of Social and Political Studies, Journalism Section, Bucarest, 1987, page 99. *** How to write, in Dreptatea magazine, year I, nr. 50, December 1927, page 3. Colectia revistei Presa noastr, Uniunea Ziaristilor Profesionisti, Bucuresti

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Romanian Narrative Journalism: Ethics, Authenticity and Unreliability in Creative Nonfiction: A Study Case
Elena Ghine, Ana Elefterescu - University of Bucharest,Bucharest, Romania

1. Introduction: from grand narratives to narrative journalism Postmodern theorists place the individual at the core of contemporary society as a node in multiple networks rather than a member of one or more communities. The overall social fragmentation, the informational segregation into global villages and the increasing individualism can all be seen as symptoms of what Lyotard explained through the death of grand narratives in the postmodern world (Lyotard, 1988). As the over-arching philosophies that ethically and politically shaped human societies through the past ages have gradually lost their credibility, the legitimation of knowledge in postmodern society has to come from other sources. Grand narratives are, thus, replaced by Wittgensteins language games (apud. Lyotard, 1988): linguistic conducts that regulate social behavior in various groups and in different aspects of life. Instead of giving credence to holistic philosophies of history such as religious doctrines, enlightenment and universal reason or Marxism postmodern men fragment their life into smaller contexts, taking localized social roles (student, employee, spouse etc.) that are regulated by different logics and different ethics. According to Bauman (2009, 14), [t]he task of holding society together (whatever society may mean under the liquid-modern conditions) is being subsidiarized, contracted out, or simply falling to the realm of individual life-politics. Thus, one of the problems of contemporary men is that, by getting lost in the network, their inter-human relationships become ever more fragile and they tend to lose the sense of belonging and the ability to place themselves in the broader, universal frame. Following all these social, political, economic and environmental changes, individuals end up re-questioning their ways of building identity for the self, for a group, a community etc. In this context, mass media play an important role, not only as a watch-dog of democracy, but as (the main) creator of informational content regarding either major breaking news at international level, or micro-events pulled from the daily routine that, in the end, shape our imaginary universe. Thus, the media content is deeply assimilated, if not mirrored, in the identity of the individuals constituting the audience and more importantly can play a significant role in the identity-building process. However, mainstream media in every form contributes rather to the preservation of the status quo through its agenda setting: McLuhans term of global village comes to mind when observing the way individuals exposed to ever more advanced and wide set of information regarding the world tend to rather isolate themselves from it. Too much information causes apathy and people end up building a sort of immune system in order to cope with the news generally, not very bright of the risk society that we live in (Beck, 1992). Other forms of journalism address this issue and explore the ways to fill in the gap between the individuals and their society. Narrative or literary journalism (we will discuss the terminology in the following pages) addresses the very issue of how individuals interact with their environments by delivering rigorously documented accounts of events, where the author places himself not omnisciently outside of the story, but in the midst of it. Fully immersed into the subject and using narrative techniques borrowed from literary writing in order to tell their stories to the public, narrative journalists usually offer a different perspective of things and use the very subjectivity as a way to get to the audience. Due to the long-term commitment and thoroughness in researching their topics, they tend to address issues that are otherwise seen as marginal or, on the contrary, wellknown subjects that are brought into a new light. As we will see further, literary journalists generally aim to authentically write at the level of felt life (Kramer, 1995) but at the same time, the better their stories are, the more they manage to touch a universal cord that resonates into every 122

reader. This is a key element for every good storytelling work, but in narrative journalism the stakes might be higher because, as a form of media, it takes part in the creation of collective memory and consciousness. In this sense, narrative journalism might well take the role that grand narratives previously had: in a fragmented society where different language game structures apply to different social roles of individuals, the way to reach them and to keep them geared in the social mechanism is through similarly localized narratives that do not portray a holistic view of how everything should work, but instead throw in shards of what the world might look like from a different perspective. 2. A narrative theory of journalism: legacy, meaning and traits Narrative journalism refers to journalism that combines the storytelling elements of fiction with the truth-telling of traditional journalism and is often used interchangeably with the term literary journalism, because it demands a standard and quality of writing found only in literature. (Goc et. al. 2008, 213; Holm, 2006). In fact, an extended list of terms that refer to this journalistic technique includes narrative/literary journalism, creative non-fiction (Meyer, 2011), new journalism (Boynton, 2005), intimate or immersion journalism (Harrington, 1997; Kirtz, 2011). Narrative journalism started in the U.S. in the 60s under the form of the New Journalism movement of writer journalists such as Truman Capote; but as he himself admitted, the roots of this journalistic approach are to be found in the works of earlier avant-gardists going all the way back to Daniel Dafoe in 1700 or to the European realist writers of the 18th-19th century, as Zola, Balzac or Dickens (Boynton, 2005; Kramer, 1995). New journalists have placed the seeds of long-form nonfiction, while their contemporary counterparts gathered under the clumsy label of New New Journalism tend to write stories that benefit from the legitimacy that Wolfes legacy has brought to literary nonfiction, while reaching another level: Boynton (2005) characterizes their writing as being rigorously reported, psychologically astute, sociologically sophisticated, and politically aware. The current generation of narrative journalists thus brings her own con tribution to this structure by developing techniques of long immersion reporting, trying to cover the gap between their subjective perception and the reality they want to depict (Vanoost, 2010, 23). By observing their writings, Kramer (1995) has drawn a set of more formal characteristics of this journalistic genre. The style of the articles tends to be simple, frank intimate or ironic but always keeping a personal touch. Taking from literary narrative techniques, a piece of narrative journalism has a plot and characters and presents an action that takes place during a certain period of time. Scenes may be narrated in a non-linear order and extended dialogues are employed. The way journalists create news stories is regarded as framing, a process of selecting and rejecting information in the construction of a news story by placing emphasis on a particular aspect or angle (Goc et. al., 2008, 215). Thus, mixing the main narrative with various digressions and tales allows the writer to amplify or reframe events. And all this is done in order to develop meaning and to lead the readers to a worthwhile destination. Philip Meyer (2011) suspects that the technologies of the information age produce content at a faster pace than their capacity to produce understanding. Narrative journalism, thus, comes as complementary to the 24h news stream that the digital media have made possible and responds to the audiences need for synthesis and interpretation. According to Nancy Graham Holm (2006), [i]n the postmodern age, journalists must assign meaning because information alone [] does not inform. Narrative journalists believe that too much information turns people off and that it is difficult to get and keep peoples attention when they are constantly being assaulted by information from various sources. Thus the key elements for them are information, fascination, identification (Holm, 2006). The topics they cover usually come from the universe of the daily routine, rather than extraordinary events there is material that allows long-term, in-depth fieldwork, and there are news that require a quick reaction and leave no time for frank access and interpretation and they adopt a mobile stance in order to tell the story and address the readers directly. However, literary journalists reject the idea that narrative needs to be soft and explanatory. On the contrary, they believe that its greatest unrealized potential is to communicate the hardest news - the crucial questions of social justice. Grim subjects, destitute characters; complicated wrongs need narrative so people will read them and give half a damn. (Katherine Boo apud. Kirtz, 2011) As objectivity 123

seems to be outdated in the general postmodern apathy, the storytelling approach might well be a good way of re-engaging people in their societies, of getting them to re-think their social role and their relations with others (Lallemand, 2011). As Kramer (1995) puts it, [t]he process moves readers, and writers, toward realization, compassion, and in the best of cases, wisdom. () And narratives of the felt lives of everyday people test idealizations against actualities. Truth is in the details of real lives. The narrative model seems to address some of the key-questions for journalism as a whole, as well as for its democratic function. To go back to Kramer (1995) literary journalism has, for him, an intrinsic politic, democratic, pluralistic and anti-elite function within society. However, narrative journalism also poses some new ethical questions that need to be addressed in order for it to really achieve its goals that is, to bring novelty in the journalistic field and to lead to a deeper comprehension of social issues. The ethical question. Comparing two approaches to the story of a 81 year old man diagnosed with Alzheimers disease who decides to take his own life one of them being a traditional journalistic reportage, while the other one was a narrative approach to the story Holm (2006) comes to terms with the fact that narrative journalism requires ethical compromise (although she admits that the print form might not be as invasive as video documentaries). Her main concern lies in the unavoidable invasion of the journalist in the life of the subject who may or may not be aware of his exposure, while the audience/readers might end up feeling like uncomfortable voyeurs. For Lallemand (2011), narrative journalism needs an even stronger set of rules and controls than traditional media forms because it employs a subjective perspective that may influence the journalists relation with his sources and the expression of his own stand towards the topic researched. Meyer (2011) considers the problem with narrative journalism to be the writers temptation to avoid fact checking for fear that the facts might ruin a good story. His perfect model would be the one of an evidence-based narrative that is, good storytelling based on verifiable evidence. For instance, journalists may face the situation where, in their story, they have to narrate scenes that they hadnt really witnessed the question, for Vanoost (2010, 24), is whether and how must they state this. Moreover, since literary journalism is based mostly on the witness position of the writer and on his sensibility in telling the story, this form of journalism is to be analyzed not by the standards of objectivity (as we have already seen), but rather in terms of authenticity. (Cornu apud. Vanoost, 2010, 24) By serving built stories that aim to provide a complex understanding of the world, narrative journalism can bring a significant contribution to identity construction. But, according to Salmon (2007, 111), the narrative also comprises a high potential of manipulation. Given that the very act of narrating is subjective and under the full control of the narrator, the result might be a persuasive story that imposes to its public a certain vision of the facts. Another ethical issue revolves around the question if narrative journalism is, in the end, an extensive and complex account of reality or a way to simplify, schematize and manipulate the readers? As suggested by Vanoost (2010), the possible answers to these questions lie in the implicit reading agreement between the writer and his readers: such an analysis has to take into account the narrators stance in the story outside or within, subjective and limited or omniscient etc. as well as the role attributed to the reader is he perceived as a passive or a critical voice, does the author leave any doubts for the reader to explore etc. Just as the postmodern men, to whom these creative nonfictions are addressed, dont subscribe anymore to a universal set of values and rules, no single ethical interpretation can be applied to all narrative journalism materials. Unlike the grand narratives that were legitimized by a certain objectivity, the small narratives of literary journalists have to be read in a deconstructed ethical context. According to Lyotard (1988), the sole ethical behavior in postmodern times is to remain alert to threats of injustice that is, to see things in their particularity, and not enclosed in abstract concepts. 3. Research: corpus and methodology The articles chosen. We consider Dect o Revist (further on, DOR) as unique in the 124

Romanian journalistic field because it is the only magazine that systematically publishes pieces of narrative journalism. As it is stated in their description and confirmed by the creator and Editor-inChief, Cristian Lupa, whom weve talked to, the purpose of the publication is to tell stories about how we live today. The core elements of this approach are depth and emotion: the stories that unfold in the quarterly pages of the magazine are meant to reflect and explain, in words and images, the ideas and obsessions of todays Romania. Thus, for this study, we have selected a series of narrative articles, first of all, based on their popularity and success most of them have been promoted on DORs website or in the social networks. A second criterion was based on their variety of styles and typologies we have chosen articles written by different authors and ranging from portraits/self-portraits to narrative coverage. The final corpus is, therefore, made out of six articles:
English Title The Loneliness of Monica Macovei. What Happens If You Always Want to Tell the Truth Christian Ciocan Loves You Danas Choices Cristi Puiu From Behind Curtain the Original Title Author Singurtatea Monici Macovei. Ce se ntmpl Vlad Mixich dac vrei s spui mereu adevrul Christian Ciocan te Tea Teodorescu iubete Alegerile Danei Cristi Puiu Simina Mistreanu Cristian Lupa Issue DOR 7.1, Autumn 2011 DOR 4, Autumn 2010 DOR 5, Winter 2010 DOR 3, Summer 2010 DOR 7.1, Autumn 2011 DOR 9, Summer 2012

Pink Din spatele cortinei Laureniu Olteanu roz Cealalt via a lui Ana Maria Ciobanu The Other Life of Ghi Ghi

Most of the articles chosen are more or less portraits that is, they are focused on a main character that the author is depicting by using a series of narrative techniques such as reproduced dialogue, framing and so on. The Loneliness of Monica Macovei. What Happens If You Always Want to Tell the Truth portrays former Minister of Justice, Monica Macovei, as a fighter in the name of truth in a corrupt country. Christian Ciocan Loves You depicts the narcissism and self centrism of the Romanian Polices spokesman, Christian Ciocan, involved in several press scandals regarding his inappropriate behavior towards female journalists. In Danas Choices we learn about the struggles of a woman fighting breast cancer and understand more about the choices that one has to make once on this path. Cristi Puiu is the portrait of internationally known enfant terrible of Romanian cinema, Cannes awarded movie director Cristi Puiu in his own words, as well as his friends and critics. From Behind the Pink Curtain is a subjective account of a homosexuals coming out of the closet and the challenges he has to face in contemporary Romanian society. And, last, The Other Life of Ghita tells the stunning story of a young man whose life and identity had been decided through a series of unfortunate bureaucratic errors. Problems and research questions. What we want to verify, through this study, is the extent to which these narrative journalistic materials truly adhere to the reading convention (Vanoost, 2010) specific to this style of writing and the ethical challenges they bring out. Due to the narrative approach, the authors voice is very present in all materials and our aim is to identify the means through which this presence is felt firstly, at the textual level, and secondly, at the level of meaning and influence towards the readers. The very subjectivity of narrative journalism cuts both ways: while adding more credibility to the facts through the personal account and assumed stance, it also may bring in front of the audience a story that is already processed, interpreted by the author and, thus, manipulate the readers towards a single interpretation of the facts. Through this reading convention, the author is attributing a certain position and role both to himself and to the reader. This is translated into the stance that the author takes in his story: is he assuming a witness position, acknowledging the limits of his subjectivity or does he assume an omniscient position, presenting a single and certain story without any grey 125

areas? As for the reader is he being assigned a critic role of understanding and interpreting the story in his own way or is he being served an already digested story? Of course, between these extremes, many other stances of the author in relation to the story and to his readers are possible. Based on the chosen texts, we will try to identify the main indicators of the authors presence in the writing and assess the extent of this presence and its intended influence towards the readers. Of course, this study cannot and does not aim to analyze the outcome of the articles, as this would require a different type of research based on a corpus of readers. However, we are interested as mentioned in the authors stances and their techniques of interacting and influencing the narrative texts delivered to their audience. Methodology. Through qualitative content analysis, we passed the six selected materials through two analysis grids. The first grid addresses the reading convention and it is based on the observations of Genette (1980), Lallemand, Todorov and Vanoost (2010). This grid is mainly focused on the form of the text and on the techniques of staging the story (mise-en-narration). The indicators that we have chosen are meant to point out the place and the role of the narrator, as well as the place and the role he attributes to the characters in his story, at a textual level. The question that would best synthesize this grid is: How can the narrators presence shape or distort the reality of the facts? The second grid can be titled Authenticity vs. Unreliability (based on Denzin, Richardson, Frank apud. Jeppesen & Hansen, 2011) and it reunites key concepts regarding what can be understood as true writing, and what cannot, according to the authors.
Heterogeneity A sense of the others inner unfinalizability; Interviewing another is a privilege One story calls forth another story; Generate new questions; Take public action on private troubles A space of consolation; Affect emotionally or intellectually; Create moral compassion A new relation of author to character; Show ones moral colors Instigate self-reflections; Reader experiences his own subjectivity Unification with the other; Confessional mode

Change

Authenticity Categories

Sensibility

Transparency

Reflexivity

Emotionalism Unreliability Categories

Neutrality

Extracting static themes characteristics; Boring

or

listing

of

Superior Knowledge

Monologue; The scientific goal is representation; Certain experiences are more authentic than others

The analytical questions that this grid approaches are related to the capacity of the writing to make room for heterogeneity, to the ability of the story to instigate change and again to the authors position, although this time at the level of content, and not form. 4. Discussion 126

The narrators relationship to the story. Building on Genettes observations, we can identify in the texts three different narrative stances (Genette, 1980): either the narrator tells his own story (in which case he is also the main character), or he tells someone elses story, which can be seen from a completely exterior point of view (extradiegetic) or through the eyes of a narratorwitness, but who is not as well the hero of the story (intradiegetic). The indicators that signal the presence of one or more of these stances are mainly the pronouns, used either in 1st single person or in 3rd person. Changing points of view and taking the perspective of a character are narrative techniques used in literary journalism, but to which extent can a journalism claim to know what is in the head of his character? Among our chosen articles, only one of them is a pure subjective account of the narrators own story: From Behind the Pink Curtain is written more as a confession than a portrait, which places its author at the center of the story, both as narrator and as main character. But the largest part of the texts (four articles out of six) proves to be intradiegetic The Loneliness of Monica Macovei. What Happens If You Always Want to Tell the Truth, Christian Ciocan Loves You, Danas Choices, Cristi Puiu as they bear the subjective mark of a narrator-witness who wants to make his presence felt at the textual level, but not as a character in the story itself. The last article appears to be extradiegetic in its approach (The Other Life of Ghi), as the narrator never makes his presence obviously felt in the text (on the contrary, when having to mention himself, he uses the word the reporter instead of a 1st person pronoun). The effect is that the writer-narrator seems to subtract himself almost entirely from the story, thus leaving the facts at the sole interpretation of the reader. On the other hand, it allows the reader to fully identify with the narrative voice and to read the story though a single, omniscient point of view without assuming any subjectivity. The narrator in relation to his characters. Continuing to follow Genettes and Todorovs works, we can identify three types of approach to the characters of a story: from behind (as named by Todorov) when the symbolization of the narrator overweighs the one of the character, or the zero focus (Genette, 1980) with when the symbolization of the narrator equals the one of the character, or Genettes internal focus and, finally, from outside when the symbolization of the narrator is overweighed by the one of the character and corresponds to Genettes external focus. In other terms, the narrator can either assume that he knows more than his character, claim that he knows as much as his character or show that he knows less than him. In the extremes, the vision from behind points out a tendency of the author to build an interpretation of the text and to tell more than facts themselves; while, in the outside vision, the author assumes his witness role, without getting in the head of his character. One of the chosen articles, From Behind the Pink Curtain, is a clear proof of a narrative approach with the character. Since the narrator is the main character, the facts and emotions presented are to be read as genuine and self-conscious, as there is no external voice that mediates the story to the readers. However, four of the articles prove a vision from behind (The Loneliness of Monica Macovei, Christian Ciocan Loves You, Danas Choices, Cristi Puiu). What we have considered as indicators of this fact are usually the assumptions stated by the authors especially regarding the emotions or attitudes of the character. For example, describing a conversation that he had not witnessed, Vlad Mixich makes the story livelier by adding several details: Suddenly, Silvia felt that her daughters life is on the bridge of getting very complicated. () Macovei looked at her and answered hesitatingly Yes I believe not. Its too much. But wait until I talk with someone else too. Although the bring color to the story, indicators such as suddenlyfelt or hesitatingly cannot be verified by the authors knowledge and are, therefore, mere assumptions that the author knows what the characters were feeling at the time of the conversation. Of course, all the information may and has to be backed by a thorough research; but indicators that hint the emotions and attitudes are most subjective and can influence the readers opinion more than mere facts. In the case of the last article, The Other Life of Ghi, such indicators are minimal, thus we may say that the narrative vision is from the outside. Story type. According to Vanoost (2010) the stories can be either closed when they are delivered to the readers containing the interpretation as well or open when the reader is 127

invited to draw his own conclusion. In the first scenario, the narrator offers a unique vision of the facts, while in the second case, he leaves space for inferences (places of uncertainty, ambiguities, flows etc.) The act of closing a story can be pointed out by various aspects, some of them more obvious than others. At the textual level, the ironic use of certain words or the slip of connotation phrases targets directly the role of the reader. Towards the end of The Loneliness of Monica Macovei, the author exposes a meditation regarding his characters place as a symbol in the Romanian society: She knows that she is rather a symbol than a ferocious politician. And today, more than anytime, Romania is going through a crisis of symbols. Every one of us wants to believe that a fair man arrived in a power position is not a nave dream, but a possible one. Every one of us needs that and Macovei is among the few remaining symbols that we can hang on to () continuing to be only a symbol, a jewel to be shown off on a wedding day. The connotations and implications of this passage are obviously pointing towards a favorable interpretation of the character by the reader. In Christian Ciocan Loves You, the series of repetitions I love you, I love you is an ironical way of pointing out a persisting trait of the character but a single one. However, the other four articles have all the chances to be considered open stories (Danas Choices, Cristi Puiu, The Other Life of Ghi, From Behind the Pink Curtain). Regardless of the authors opinion and interpretation of the facts, these are not to emerge from the text and impose themselves on the reader. The authors tend to avoid places of certainty and leave a lot of room for the reader to fill in the gaps. The facts are not entirely explained and further explanatory comments are usually avoided. For example, reproducing a conversation between Ghita and his father, the author of The Other Life of Ghi restrains from explanatory indications: Ghita tried to understand how come his parents came back for him at the hospital and brought home another child, but neither his father knew any better. He showed his father the criminal record that brought him so many troubles and placed his right hand next to his. They both smiled when they noticed their nails looked alike. Authenticity. At the level of content, Danas Choices seems to be the most heterogeneous of the articles, as it presents multiple facets of the story and employs various voices and tones. While, at the other end of the spectrum, The Loneliness of Monica Macovei and Christian Ciocan Loves You are the least heterogeneous, both presenting a single story: Macovei is portrayed as the solitaire good character fighting against injustice, while Ciocan looks as the classic type of histrionic, egocentric character. From the point of view of the drive to change, From Behind the Pink Curtain stands out of the corpus chosen, as it generates new questions regarding homosexuality in the Romanian society. Moreover, the fully subjective point of view and the confessional tone contribute to the accuracy of the testimonial, without explicitly aiming a certain outcome. Paradoxically, by not targeting a specific goal, the article manages to call for many new stories, interpretations and to instigate to changes in the general perception regarding the topic of homosexuality. Along the same lines, the story of Ghita brings out a new light over the life of orphan children, their chances and their struggles in life. Without aiming to do so, the story point out naturally certain aspects that offer the readers the opportunity to think and reassess some of their prejudgments. Unreliability. Emotionalism is felt in several articles, including From Behind the Pink Curtain and The Loneliness of Monica Macovei In the first case, the article presents a unilateral vision and the confessional tone although authentic falls in the trap of ignoring any social scientific perspective (Richardson apud. Jeppesen & Hansen, 2011). The second case is an example of unification with the character, of complete empathy with the characters positive traits, without looking anywhere around them. This observation is continued in the sphere of neutrality: The Loneliness of Monica Macovei is a single sided depict where the character has no evolution throughout the story, but is portrayed as a sum of (positive) traits. Narrative journalism, through its subjective voice and thorough research is desired to take a stand towards the story, while keeping the necessary distance in order not to impose is to the audience. Neutrality as a bad characteristic refers here to the passiveness and lack of nuances in portraying the character of the story. Last but not least, Christian Ciocan Loves You proves the best example of an article 128

where the author makes proof of superior knowledge towards his readers. The narrator seems to know better that the character and, at the same time, than the readers themselves. The end of the article: AA NU/This is a BAD EXAMPLE could not be clearer in this regard. Having these considerations in mind, we can say that an overall reading convention of these articles is being shaped. The Loneliness of Monica Macovei, as well as Christian Ciocan Loves You, prove to be narrative articles very strongly built, to which the public is implicitly associated. The first article attempts to exploit only the positive traits of the character, almost pushing the reader to identify with her as a victim of the system and to admire her as an indisputable symbol of honesty and courage. In the second case, we are facing a type of rallying journalism that does not try to understand the complexity of the character (Ciocan), but uses him to reinforce the community (the public) around the same feeling of indignation, without really urging the reader to reflect upon the facts. Of course, in some cases it is difficult to tell from the text only if the writing is genuine or not: for example, when reproducing or quoting dialogue, the narrator might use indicators either as his own supposition of how the character might have felt, or because the character himself admitted to have felt in a certain way. Some explanations, on the other hand, can be eliminated from the final draft in order to ease the text and allow it to flow. But without a further study of the entire journalistic process of documenting and writing the text, we can only accept the limits of this study. Some of the other texts, such as Danas Choices or The Other Life of Ghita manage to establish to links with the public. Sometimes, the journalists and the characters points of view are in a blur, enforcing their relationship and, thus, the break with the readers. In other places, the narrator breaks with the character through the absence of interpretations and seems to be closer to the reader, both witnesses to the same extent. This decentralized approach, as an intermediary between the community of readers and the character gives a certain openness to the text, as it summons both an emotional and a reflexive reading. Thus, the reading convention shows a delicate balance between narrative and ethics and is to be analyzed contextually. This convention is rather implicit, based on indirect language games that the reader can update according to his own unpredictable beliefs and interpretations. This calls for a high responsibility of the writer, as practicing a responsible narrative journalism would mean to acknowledge all the stakes, the narrative tools and possibilities and to use them consciously.

Bibliography Bauman, Zygmunt (2008). Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers? Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press Boynton, Robert S. (2005). The Roots of the New New Journalism. The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 4. Available at http://www.robertboynton.com/ articleDisplay.php?article_id=1515 Goc, Nicola (2008). Media Narratives: The Murdering Mother. Bainbridge, Jason, Goc, Nicola and Tynan, Elizabeth, Media and journalism: new approaches to theory and practice. New York : Oxford University Press Harrington, Walt (1997). A Writers Essay: Seeking the Extraordinary in th e Ordinary. Introduction to Intimate Journalism: The Art and Craft of Reporting Everyday Life. Sage Publications. Available at http://www.niemanstoryboard.org/1997/03/28/a-writers-essay-seeking-theextraordinary-in-the-ordinary-2/ Holm, Nancy Graham (2006). Narrative Journalism: Subjectivity, No Longer a Dirty Word. P.O.V., 22, December Jeppesen, J. & Hansen, H.P. (2011). Narrative journalism as complementary inquiry. Qualitative Studies, 2(2): 98-117 Kirtz, Bill (2002). Overview: Aboard the Narrative Train. Poynter. November 21. Available at http://www.poynter.org/uncategorized/3700/overview-aboard-the-narrative-train/ Kramer, Mark (1995). Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists. Nieman Storyboard. January 1. Available at http://www.niemanstoryboard.org/1995/01/01/breakable-rules-for-literaryjournalists/

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Lallemand, Alain (2011). Journalisme naratif en pratique. Bruxelles: De Boeck Lyotard, Jean- Franois (1988). La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir. Paris: Minuit Meyer, Philip (2011). Precision Journalism and Narrative Journalism: Toward a Unified Field Theory. Nieman Reports. Fall, Online exclusives. Available at http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article-online-exclusive/100044/PrecisionJournalism-and-Narrative-Journalism-Toward-a-Unified-Field-Theory.aspx Salmon, Christian (2008). Storytelling, la machine fabriquer des histoires et formater des esprits. Paris: La dcouverte Vanoost, Marie (2010). Journalisme narrative. Derrire lengouement pourle rcit, de vraies questions thiques. Mdiatiques. Rcit et socit. 47, Autumn, 23-27

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Virtual Worlds and Fictions

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Virtual environments and online social values Case Study: Online Reputation
Poliana Stefanescu - University of Bucharest,Bucharest, Romania

Introduction The use of Internet has an important impact on personal and professional life of individuals. Content diversity is richer on the Internet than in traditional media and new online communication technologies are emerging. This characteristic makes Internet to have something for everybody. As this rich content of the Internet may be available at home, in schools, libraries or at work place, this suggests people have access to satisfy different needs in different social contexts. Because privacy became an important issue, a large number of studies took place to investigate personal and social consequences of Internet use. While television, radio and the print media are regulated and surveyed by the society, Internet is not at all regulated. Recent initiatives, like ACTA, failed after many online and offline protests. The main idea is people do not wish any regulation in the online environment, no matter how serious damages could happen. However, the uses of the Internet have serious negative effects, including spam, the spreading of the viruses and worms, spyware, phishing, hacking, online frauds, invasion of privacy, etc. Further, the uses of the Internet are creating new paradigms in such areas as business, copyrights, governance, democracy, human interactions, information search, entertainment, etc. When companies noticed the online reputation progression, as the direct involvement of the internauts on Web 2.0, they realized what unexpected challenge they had to face. In these circumstances, the enterprises understood they have to preserve the positive reputation and to protect against negative opinions on the Internet. The online reputation issue became also important at individual level, although people, especially the youngest, do not realize the importance of having a good reputation for the present life, but mostly for the next events in life. The media reported several times that employers are looking for information on the online social networks when trying to hire someone. Online reputation Reputation is the opinion (more technically, a social evaluation) of a group of entities toward a person, a group of people, or an organization on a certain criterion. All Internet users have a digital or online reputation. Essentially, this digital reputation is the opinion that others hold about the user. People aspire to have a positive online reputation. Digital reputations are developed over time and are based on the individuals digital footprint, that is a collection of the traces left by someone's activity in a digital environment an accumulation of personal information, content shared or other data which can be accessed by other internet users. In particular, it depends on the behavior in various social media sites. Digital footprints can be either passive or active: A passive digital footprint is created when data is collected about an action without any client initiation. At a low level, this could be someones name and contact details. It may also include photos, public postings and, in some cases, public records. An active digital footprint is created when personal data is released deliberately by a user who wishes to share information about themselves, such as deliberate postings or sharing information in the public and semi-public areas on the internet. Digital footprint can also refer to the size of a persons online presencethe number of individuals they interact with on social networking sites. The online reputation for a company depends on delivery of great products or services, ability to provide professional, friendly and timely customer service, ability to identify and control negative responses, and many other factors Positive and negative information about a company and products is continually circulating in cyberspace. In these circumstances, companies have to adapt and to use the same tools as their customers use online. 132

While the literature reflects various definitions of corporate reputation, a popular definition is identified as a perceptual representation of a companys past actions and future prospects that describe the firms overall appeal of its key constituents when compared with other leading rivals (Fombrun, 1996, p.72). This definition explains reputation is the synthesis of various stakeholders perceptions and creates an organizational persona that can be formulated, implemented and managed). Online reputation situations 1. One of the classical examples is the 10-day blog storm that induced the Kryptonite collapse in 2004. Kryptonite was a bike locks manufacturer and launched a new lock. A teenage client complaint was posted on different web sites proving that the new lock could be opened with a simple ballpoint pen. Because the company did not react to this complaint, other clients posted new proofs of this lock failure. Then, mass-media reported the incident and, in ten days from the beginning, Kryptonite had to announce a free product exchange that cost 10million USD. 2. In the USA, Universities are starting to warn students about employers usage of online information when hiring people. Many college students dont realize how much information about them can be easily found online, nor do they understand the consequences of that information being publically available. A digital footprint can last a lifetime unless an individual takes measures for online reputation management (monitoring). According to a May 2010 study conducted by Pew Research Center, young adults between the ages of 18-29 have a positive trend in taking steps to protect themselves by managing their online reputations. 3. In Romania, Futurelab Research45 published a top of Romanian brands according to their online reputation. The top list was ordered using an online reputation index computed as a ratio of positive and negative mentions during August 2008. Pepsi was the first with an index of 727, followed by BMW -787, Peugeot -321, Coca-Cola-253 and Carnay-228. Surprisingly, this top of online reputation is different from the top of offline reputation High Impact Brands made by Synovate. 4. Footprints left by someones activity on the Internet could lead to full identification of his/her everyday life. A well known example is the portrait of Mark L. a real person, whose online data served in an article published in an online magazine (see: http://www.le-tigre.net/Marc-LGenese-d-un-buzz-mediatique.html ). After this moment, a lot of protests invaded the Internet warning about the lack of anonymity guaranty online. Digital reputation management Digital reputation management is about the monitoring of the Internet for all reviews or mentions of the business on review sites, social media, blogs and forums. This way, a company may have notifications of negative or positive reviews and may know what its customers are doing or saying on the Internet. The websites monitoring and evaluation allow identifying opportunities for the improvement of companies mission, business goals and corporate strategy. A study by Amaral and Gomes (2009) revealed that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques are important for reputation management as well as for reaching the most relevant publics. They are talking about the usage of two strategies for corporate reputation management: 1st strategy: negative /unfavorable content is pushed down on the search engine list; 2nd strategy: improve the position of the corporate website and positive/favorable content within search engine results. Reputation management should be supervised by public relations professionals. They must pay special attention to search engines such Google because they are the primary source of information for organizations or companies. In the following lines we can see the main steps for internet reputation management: Monitor major search engines regularly Taking corrective action
45

http://100.futurelab.net/

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Content distribution Social bookmarking Track results. Corporate and employees blogs become important channels of communication. They have the advantage to be more similar and linked to traditional media coverage and they humanize the organization (Wilcox, 2009). Many corporations encouraged employees to write blogs that accomplishes several objectives like: (a) they empower employees, (b) they enhance corporate reputation, (c) they are a vehicle to interact with public, customers. The well known Forbes Magazine is watching the topic of online reputation and provides the readers advices for preserving an managing a positive reputation (http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/20/manage-online-reputationleadership-careers-identity.html ) Many college students dont realize how much information about them can be easily found online, nor do they understand the consequences of that information being publically available. In the USA, universities published a tip list for students and their families in order to advise them how to manage their reputation on line46: Privacy: avoid posting too much personal information; Avoid oversharing; Dont look guilty by association; Stop sharing unsuitable content; Stay offline when under the influence; Stop complaining; Be consistent; Separate social networking from job networking; Consider a name change; Google yourself; Generate positive content; Use Google/Profiles. The next diagram is visualizing the e-reputation process (management and monitoring) as recommended by specialists47.

46 47

http://www.safetyweb.com/online-reputation-guide-for-college-students http://digitalreputationblog.wordpress.com

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Online Reputation Process

Online Reputation Management

Online Reputation Monitoring

Networking/Social Media Personal Branding Promotian of Blogs SEO/SEM Viral content Free Tools: HowSociable, Omigli, Kartoo Payed Tools: Reputation defender, AMI Software, Digimind Allert Tools: Google Alerts

The Internet provides a great number of tools for personal reputation monitoring and management. According to Wilcox (2009), it also provides multiple channels to reach mass and niche audiences. That include: Blogs Tweets Photos on Flickr Videos on YouTube Podcasts Posting on MySpace and Facebook PowerPoint presentations on SlideShare Documents and papers on Scribd Webpages and online newsrooms Webinars. Monitoring company and brand mentions on the Internet can be done with several free tools that one can find in the list below: 135

Tools for personal reputation management Google Google.com/alerts Blog posts technorati.com Blog comments backtype.com Discussion boards boardtracker.com Twitter- search.twitter.com

Tools for corporate reputation management Google Alerts Technorati Twitter Search SocialMention SamePoint Versionista Delicious Knowem Google SideWiki Yahoo! Site Explorer

Conclusions The Web revolution is a new challenge for companies because they have to take care of their e-reputation (online reputation). This activity has a direct influence on the market acquisitions. Customers will be influenced by the company mentions on the Internet and will react to the positive or negative content, as we saw in the examples above. In Online Public Relations Phillips and Young (2009) explain in what way Internet affects organizations, forcing them to become more transparent. So, Internet became a channel of corporate communication by means of corporate websites and corporate Social Media. Companies must always remember they act in a random environment, with no control on the content posted on the Internet. They have to be reactive to any discourse in order to keep control over information. They have to use Internet interactivity to keep a trustworthy relationship with other internauts and regular customers. But, one could think it is almost impossible to control and monitor the immensity of the Internet. Online reputation drove to a new market: the emergence of measurement tools and new professionals for helping companies to take care of their image on the Net. Last year, Google launched a new reputation monitoring tool on the Internet called Me on the web. This service alerts Google account users whenever the name or some key words are mentioned in the Internet. It also gives advice for erasing bad content about a person or a company from the Web. This service is a reply to Facebook practice of privacy invasion and lack of personal data protection. Besides personal attention and effort, there are new developments for preserving a good reputation online: a new profession came out in the last 10 years- online reputation manager. Such person will control online information and will start strategies for improving the online content dedicated to an individual or a company.
Bibliography Amaral, B., Ero-Gomes (2009), Corporate Reputation and Social Outcomes, in A. Rogojinaru, S. Wolstenholme, coordinators , Current Trends in International public Relations, Tritonic, Bucharest, 2009 Fombrun, C.J., (1996), Reputation: RealisingValue from the Corporate Image. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Madden, M, Smith Aaron, (2010), Reputation Management and Social Media. How people monitor their identity and search for others online, Project Pew Research Center

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Phillips, D, Young, Ph. (2009), Online Public Relations: A Practical Guide to Developing Online Strategies in the World of Social Media, 2nd. Ed.Kogan Page Ltd. Stefanescu, P, (2009), Global Network Global Society, in Proceedings of ICEA-FAA Conference, University of Bucharest Wilcox D. L. (2009), Preserving Reputation in the Internet Age, in A Rogojinaru, S. Wolstenholme, coordinators , Current Trends in International public Relations, Tritonic, Bucharest, 2009 Wolton, Dominique (1999), Internet et aprs? Une thorie critique des nouveaux mdias, Paris, Flammarion

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Fictional or Real Blog Readers Identities?

Ruxandra Boicu - University of Bucharest,Bucharest, Romania

1. Introduction There is little specialized literature on the blog readers contribution to blogging in general, and few studies that have explored readers online identity, in particular, as against the rich scientific reference to bloggers identity, as Baumer, Sueyoshi, Tomlinson (2008: 1120) pointed out. In this paper, we presume that there is more ambiguity in perceiving the difference between real and fictional/virtual identities with non blogger readers than with bloggers, since with the latter, there is more observance of blogging identification norms. The present research focuses on some constitutive elements of blog readers identities and it equally attempts at explaining how virtual identities are shaped by the very participation in a specific blogging community. In this respect, the analysis relies on Dennens (2009: 27) list of [e]lements of blogging identity: (1) Name and blog title; (2) Profiles; (3) Post content; (4) V oice; (5) Affiliations; and (6) Visual design. We mainly insist on the readers online names and their posts contents, analyzed in terms of norms and practices of the given blog community. Depending on the blog ideological orientation, blog readers might use pseudonyms in order to obscure identifying details to varying degrees (Dennen 2009: 25). Victor Ciutacus personal blog, Harsh Words (Vorbe grele), has been selected for research; actually, one blog category was monitored for a year. It is not coincidental that the monitored year was 2009. In 2009, Victor Ciutacus blog was the sixth most commented blog in the ZeList. In the middle of the year (in July 2009), it climbed onto the first position. Nevertheless, it is not only this popularity that decided on this study interest in it. Harsh Words also stands out as a combination between a means/medium of promoting Intact Media Group ideology (constituting an informal type of corporate blog), through vivid political analysis, and the blogger/journalists space of personal marketing. The underlying premise of this study on identity and identification is that there are shared values of the Intact media consumers, definable in terms of political bias. The producers and comsumers common goal is to criticize the representatives of the political power before and during 2009 (mainly President Traian Bsescu, Prime minister, Emil Boc, and the minister of tourism, Elena Udrea), with the far-fetched pretention that everything they undertook in politics was wrong (Boicu 2012: 39). As Boicu (2012: 42) clarifies, Ciutacu has been considered an important employee of the Intact trust, as a journalist and political analyst, given the content and orientation of his media products. E-users who were familiar with his journalistic activity offline were prepared and eager to find the ideological bias of the Intact trust on Ciutacus blog too. In this study, a second hypothesis is formulated, according to which, since the blog under discussion is owned by a political analyst working for a politically biased media trust, blog readers demographic identity interpretation is subject to ideological identity. In order to support this hyposesis, statistical and qualitative analyses are applied to the readers names/pseudonyms and explicit identity details, posted mainly under one of the bloggers main posts. 2. Theoretical framework Baumer, Sueyoshi, Tomlinson (2008: 1111) are among the few theorists that emphasize the disproportion between the studies devoted to blog owners and the research on blog readers contribution and co-creation of blogging. The authors explain that: [i]n order to gain a better understanding of the social practice of blogging, we must take into account the role, contributions, and significance of the reader []. The role of this ever increasing population of blog readers presents a promising and important, yet little-explored, area of research. It is worth mentioning that blog readers, due to their great number, make the bloggers ideas circulate publicly as far as about half of the bloggers also give reasons [for 138

blogging] influencing other people (Schmidt 2007: 1411). Blog readers are also associated to a passive, manipulated category of people by Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht (2004:226), as far as the others explain: Some bloggers wrote opinion pieces to share their ideas and influence others. [ ...] Bloggers used their blogs to express opinions and advice, often with a clear statement of particular actions they wished their readers to take (Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht 2004: 226). Through procedural rules of blogging as a new media genre, blog owners have control over blog content and self-presentation. These procedural rules of blogging can be analytically separated into the three components of selection, publication, and networking, which refer to different actions, different roles, and different strategy sets [by the blogger] (Schmidt 2007: 1412). The bloggers self-presentation, off-line reputation, as well as selection of posted content influence the readers decisions on declared identities. When posting on a blog, re aders have an opportunity for exploring ones own identity. With each new group joined, a person must make decisions about self-presentation []. Through their stories shared online via media such as blogs some individuals are seeking status, also relying upon acts of self-presentation (Dennen 2009: 23). Since not all bloggers explore identity issues, some blogs may be fairly impersonal. According to Dennen (2009: 24), Technorati (2008) devised a blog classification system which considers content and authorship, using the labels personal, professional, and corporate. The author adds that, in a survey performed by Technorati (2008), it was shown that one-third of all bloggers had privacy concerns related to their identities, based on possible impact on family and friends as well as disapproval of employers, family, and friends. Blog readers, together with the blog owner develop a sense of group identity that specialized literature defines as the foundation of a community of practice. A community of practice (CofP) is a group of people brought together by some mutual endeavor, some common enterprise in which they are engaged and to which they bring a shared repertoire of resources, including linguistic resources, and for which they are mutually accountable (McConnell-Ginet 2003: 71 apud Boicu 2011). The CofP approach focuses on the practice that legitimates participants as group members. Within the fluid, dynamic and emergent computer-mediated community, it also indicates the degree to which they participate in the group activities. Wenger (1998: 73 apud Holmes and Stubbe 2003: 580) identifies three criterial features of a CofP: (1) mutual engagement, (2) a joint negotiated enterprise, and (3) a shared repertoire of negotiable resources accumulated over time. In terms of blogging communities, Schmidt (2007: 1419) gives them a more specific definition as groups of people who share certain routines and expectations about the use of blogs as a tool for information, identity, and relationship management, considering that social realities can be perceived as historical and daily constructions of the individual and collective actors (Mucchielli & Guivarch 1998: 116 apud Branea 2011: 245). Analysts of blogging communities agree that identity issues play a crucial role in the shaping of community norms. There is an interrelated influence between the choice of bloggers/readers individual identity and the collective identity of the blog community as a whole. As Dennen (2009: 27) emphasizes: Note that while individuals make identity choices that express who they are, at the same time these choices tend to reinforce community norms. In Identity via name, which concerns our study too, Dennen (2009: 27) specifies that bloggers most often use pseudonyms instead of their real life names. We attempt at demonstrating that non blogger readers are all the more inclined to hide their off-line identities under pseudonyms. The author explains that Pseudonyms may indicate gender, field of study, academic position, and attitude. Complementing readers choices of names or pseudonyms, we are equally interested in bloggers/readers identification through the content of their posts, that Dennen (2009: 29) termed Identity via post content. The study authoress explains: Over time, bloggers tell their stories, constructing a narrative of their lives. With varying degrees of openness, they share details about their families, hometown, life history, and relationships along with tales of their academic experiences. Readers who follow a blog regularly will come to learn these background details and assemble a fuller picture of the blogger. 139

Consequently, cumulating identity elements of both bloggers and readers identities, a fairly comprehensive persona emerges for each of them (Dennen 2009: 30). Identity presentation is discussed within the framework of blogging practices on Victor Ciutacus blog. 3. Methodology and data The present research relies on the statistical analysis of the blog readers signatures, as well as the content and discourse analysis of the readers comments. Statistical analysis concerns Victor Ciutacus second relevant post (in reverse chronological order), under the blog category The Days Replies and has the blog archives as a source. The bloggers main post is entitled Speaking on behalf of the sovereign people [Vorbind n numele poporului suveran] and is commented in 121 readers posts. The topic under debate is whether President Bsescus totalitarian behaviour in politics is comparable to Hitlers. This may be considered an interesting political topic of discussion, since it was launched by the blog owner a few weeks before the 2009 presidential election, in which Bsescu was one of the candidates. The research hypothesis of the statistical analysis of the commentators signatures contains the assumption that readers who are not bloggers themselves are shier than bloggers as readers, as fas as identity revealing is concerned. The latter half of the research is devoted to the content and discourse analysis of the readers comments, both under the previously mentioned main post (2nd post of the blog category), and under the third head post of The Days Replies. The third main post is entitled: End of an era? Beginning of history [Sfrit de epoc? nceput de istorie...] and it includes the readers analysis of one of president Bsescus strategical defeats, when Mona Pivniceru, President of Romanias Association of Magistrates, succeeded in not allowing the President of the Republic to get involved in an important act of deliberation of the Association members. This section interprets the readers declared identities (ideological, professional, age, gender, etc) and attempts at confirming the second research hypothesis, according to which gender and age identities are instrumental in triggering ideological controversies, marked by the pre-electoral context. 4.1. Bloggers vs. non bloggers signatures as multi-faceted identification We assume, in keeping with specialized literature, that bloggers are more identifiable than non bloggers, that is to say their identity may be considered less fictional, since, in addition to the few explicit specifications of their identity data in comments content, they make more or less consistent self-presentations on their own blogs. There may be forms on the blog home page that specify information on gender, age, work, location, and personal interests, or [] there may be more freeform [in identification] about me pages featuring a narrative profile. Alternately, a brief (two or three sentences) profile blurb may appear in a sidebar on the main page of a blog (Dennen 2009: 29). Nevertheless, there are less explicit blog main pages too. A telling example is Codeus, a blogger who comments on Ciutacus blog under this signature. On Condeus main page, one may only find out that Codeus was ranked among the best blogs in 2009 and that s/he welcomes readers to post on condition they use civilized language and do not post anonymous comments. On the About me page of codeus41, a second blog s/he owns, there is some explicit self-presentation, posted in October 24, 2010 at 9:31 pm, as an answer to her/his readersrequest for more identity details: [T]he stories or summaries or whatever they are on this blog are mostly autobiographical. So if youve read this blog, it means that you know me. And those who just want some dry information about me that would fit here at About show they havent read my blog. I dont know if I somehow managed to clarify this issue. I am 43, although this information exists somewhere in the blog [povestirile sau rezumatele sau cum or mai fi de pe blogul asta sunt in marea majoritate autobiografice. deci daca ai citit blogul inseamna ca ma cunosti. iar cine vrea doar niste informatii seci despre mine cum ar incapea aici la About inseaman ca nu mi-a citit blogul. nu stiu daca cat de cat am reusit sa lamuresc problema. ani am 43 desi si informatia asta exista undeva in blog]. Besides the above-quoted clarifications, the names included in Codeus Blogroll may add valuable information about the blog authors identity: ADI HDEAN, ADRIAN NSTASE, 140

ANDREI BDIN, ANDREI CRIV, CHINEZU, COMISIA EUROPEAN, CORINA CREU, ION ILIESCU, MAMI NINETA, MARCUS-IRONICUS, MILE CRPENIAN, MONITORUL OFICIAL AL ROMNIEI, MOSHE&MORDECHAI, MDLINA IONESCU, NEA COSTACHE, OCTAVIAN PALER, Palconi, PARLAMENTUL EUROPEAN, Tudor, VICTOR CIUTACU, VLAD PETREANU, TEFANIA COOVEI. Blogroll information is termed by Dennen (2009: 30) as identity via affiliation, relying on identification through explicit belonging to a particular group of bloggers. Resuming the statistical aproach of Ciutacus readers identity, in Table 1, I calculated the ratio between the numbers of bloggers and non bloggers, mentioning their respective signatures:
Readers status Nr. of readers Bloggers and Codeus, Lilick , valentin, feroviarul, Fanu, Costin Tanasescu, 28 commentators Julia, C. Bojan, horya, mery, superm, Drujbaru, balauru84, Dispecer Blogosfer, bercea interstelarul, Emil Stoica, wickerman, indignaredegeaba, PODI, inconstanta, Theodora, Florin, Emilia, Eugen, Lucius Fascius, Cum se fur ideile fr s faci copy/paste, Irongates's Blog, alexandru brasov Commentators violet, smoker, alegatorul, vingt ans aprs, korbul, sho-ping- 58 pong, nostradamus, ALM, eu, NEMESIS, Maximmouse, IoanaP, lol, unu` ratacit, Roshu, HAPAX, Simon, florentin radu, SuKRiT, Begone, I.I., Greywolf, Doru, eliza, Asztalos Floare, parafaragaramus, Il Consigliere, B, MICUTU, santinela, stan, che, marius, mishulescu, Fiara, Mihai, adada, doi lei, Ametitu, cornel, mutter, Silviu Pana, pace, Marcel Taban, Antonescu, Adriana, Bubulea, Hosty, Iordachel Gudurau, dan, contele, Plebea, Eliana, Seful, Lucid, MIHAIL ANTOFIE-SPANIA, aliosha41, Maria Table 1. Readers Identity as bloggers or non bloggers Names, pseudonyms

Discussion: Both bloggers and non bloggers signatures have been included in Table 1, in the chronological order of the postings, under Ciutacus main post: Speaking on behalf of the sovereign people [Vorbind n numele poporului suveran]. We remark that more than half of Ciutacus readers are not bloggers, therefore, according to the study hypothesis, it is more difficult to separate fictional from real identity in their case. In terms of signature formal aspects and their implications, Table 2 proposes an attempt at approaching the readers signatures semantically:
Tabel 2: Signature types in the bloggers (1) and non bloggers (2) groups Signature type Nr. of signatures Nr. of in group 1 signatures in group 2 First names (diminutive names included) 11 16 Surnames 3 2 Full names 2 6 Nicknames 4 15 Pseudonyms proper 8 22 Masculine pseudonyms/names/full names 15 33

Discussion: Mention should be made that statistics may not be exact as there is overlapping of categories. Even with this approximation in mind, we attempt at interpreting the data, comparing the categories from the point of view of the readers intention of revealing or hiding their real identity under possibly fictional signatures. It seems that the readers find that first names are safer 141

than surnames or full names. That is why, in both groups, first names largely outnumber surnames and full names. Readers blog full names give the appearance of real names, and thus observing the Netiquette rule of declaring ones identity. In spite of this more formal norm with bloggers, it is a paradoxical observation that non bloggers use full names three times more (2 vs. 6). Semantically speaking, the nicknames and the pseudonyms chosen by Ciutacus readers have sometimes a funny connotation which is suitable to the fairly playful linguistic style on this blog, but thist may be judged as not serious, therefore less credible, even for the content posted under such signatures. Pseudonyms proper make the most numerous category with both groups. What we call pseudonyms proper are common nouns, initial letters, names of famous people or fictional characters. They are varied in nature and difficult to classify, ranging from superm (that has no denotative meaning) to How ideas can be stolen without copy/pasting [Cum se fur ideile fr s faci copy/paste] and Irongates's Blog, in group 1, and from twenty years after [vingt ans aprs] to SuKRiT [upset in Romanian, with a peculiar spelling], in group 2. The larger number of pseudonyms used by non bloggers (22 vs. 8 with bloggers) proves that bloggers are more concerned than non-bloggers with blogging norms, one of these norms implying the revelation of bloggers real identity. In terms of gender implications, both categories of readers show the same preference for masculine pseudonyms and names. It is interesting that, depending on the gender of pseudonyms or names selected, the readers posts will observe the Romanian grammar rule of gender agreement, although some of the blogging community members still doubt about the other readers real gender. At the same time, considering the data in Table 2, we may conclude that, in the two groups studied, there are mainly men or the participants feel that Ciutacus blog is a male-controlled environment and consequently, choose masculine pseudonyms or names. We cannot end this section without noting that some signatures are totally or partially spelt in widely used foreign languages such as English, French, German or Russian. Likewise, the names or phrases used for signatures may be interpreted in keeping with the dominant anti-Bsescu ideology on Victor Ciutacus blog. The statistical analysis of the blog readers signatures confirm the research hypothesis that, except for the full name category, non bloggers (group 2) feel freer than bloggers (group 1) to use types of names or pseudonyms that are difficult to decipher in terms of identiy. 4.2. Inventory of identities explicitly mentioned in the readers posts Using content and discourse analyses, we have found a relative recurrence of some identity marks, although there are scarce explicit references to demographic identity features in the readers comments. The most explicitly or implicitly present is the sense of identification with the blogging community, through the readers support of anti-Bsescu positions, promoted by the blog owner himself. For instance, in the bloggers group, Costin Tanasescu, who shares the dominant blog ideology, posts more than the other bloggers (3 times vs. Lilick and valentin who post twice each, while all the other 26 participants in group 1 post only one comment). As far as non bloggers are concerned, there is a more obvious correspondance between conformity with Ciutacus political views and the number of posts. To be more specific, nostradamus criticizes the regime in power, at that time, in 6 comments, che satirizes Bsescus physical flaws in 4, other faithful members such as I.I (4 comments) or violet (3 comments) interfere whenever they feel necessary to defend Ciutacus person or ideological bias. On the list of declared supporters, we should also include Asztalos Floare, Bubulea, Iordachel Gudurau, MIHAIL ANTOFIE -SPANIA who post only once. The followers list to which they belong is much longer than that of the Intact critics and, implicitly, of Bsescus defenders. On the latter list, we should include Begone who, although in a civilized tone, attacks Ciutacu and his supporters, B, MICUTU, well educated and critical too, or doi lei who suggests that Bsescu is beneficial to the Intact finances, as far as he is the prominent targey of the ab ovementioned media trust criticism. This list of adversaries of the blog main ideology may be extended so as to include softer stands, put forth by blog readers identified as PODI, smoker, Mihai or Marcel Taban. 142

Another interesting debate within the readers community focuses on age identity. Whereas from balauru84s post, we can only infer s/he is a young reader, since in her/his posts, there are quotations from Parazitii (a Romanian hip hop group who, because of using explicit language in their songs, were, according to Wikipedia, subject to multiple restrictions imposed by the Romanian National Audiovisual Council. Romanian television and radio stations were repeatedly fined for playing some of their videos/songs and two videos were banned outright. This motivated their song "Jos cenzura!" ("Down with Censorship!") which criticized the Social Democratic government and was released shortly before the local elections in June 2004), we can witness the fact that nostradamus utterly dismisses balauru84s uncomfortable remarks, showing that they may only come from a young and nave person. There are other marks of age identity too: HAPAX has a son in Greece, so s/he is old enough to have a grown -up son, while Roshu seems to be young enough to use English words or to be ironic about people who lived in Ceauescus time. In shaping fictional identity, we consider that it is problematic to pretend being an educated person when one is not. There is little doubt that, although linguistically brutal, bercea interstelarul has above-average educational background, as against NEMESIS who just keeps swearing at Bsescus supporters. In the category of cultivated readers, we should include I.I. who posts quotations in English, just like mutter, mishulescu, who is proud of writing on this blog and who comments on media missions in society, cornel, who posts four decent comments, as well as dan or Plebea, among others. Finally, there is gender identity that deserves a special attention. Generally, it is carefully hidden by the readers, with a few exceptions. Simon declares to be a happy man with the women in his life. Being outspoken in terms of gender, he thinks he is entitled to question the others identity. Actually, in a post in October 30, 2009, he ironically addresses a co-reader with Mr. Eliza [domnule Eliza], attacking Eliza on gender ambiguity. In fact, we have noticed that both gender and age identities are subject to controversies, demographic identity being subordinated to ideological one. There is a controversy under the third head post of The Days Replies, entitled: End of an era? Beginning of history [Sfrit de epoc? nceput de istorie...], that continues in the 2nd main post. It involves violet, who pretends to be a middle-aged woman, and Marius, a supposed young man who disagrees with the blog and Intact trust policies: I am 24, I have no connection with politics and I want to live in a decent country. But Victor, it is inadmissible to do press in this way. Think about you and your family that everything you do will affect your and our common future too (By Marius on September 10, 2009 at 2:43 p.m.) [Am 24 de ani, n-am nici o legatura cu politica si vreau sa traiesc intr-o tara decenta. Dar nu se poate, ba victore, sa faceti presa la modul asta. Gandeste-te la tine si la familia ta, ca tot ceea ce faci o sa se rasfranga asupra viitorului vostru si al nostru al tuturor. (De Marius pe 10 September 2009 la 14:43)] It is the same day that Marius launches an injurious remark about violet , one of Ciutacus most faithful readers: Violet ... I do not know if you're a stupid man (woman) or you can understand what it is about. I would realize that if you tried to write some consecutive sentences. (By Marius on September 10, 2009 at 3:20 p.m.) [Violetnu stiu nici eu daca esti prost (proasta) sau te duce capul. M-as lamuri daca ai lega si tu cateva fraze consecutive. (De Marius pe 10 September 2009 la 15:20)] There is a double offence in Marius post: violet is called both stupid and fake, in terms of gender identity. Violet is a feminine name and it is all the more destructive for a declared middleaged woman to receive injuries from a declared young man such as Marius. violet answers this verbal aggressiveness in the following way: 143

@ Marius Now I see what you've written about me: I forgive you, considering you're too young. I still tell you you're not able to give me marks, at least because I got some very good marks, from my university teachers. 17-22 years ago. [...] (By violet on September 10, 2009 at 16:30) [Acum am vazut ce mi-ai raspuns: te iert, considerand ca esti prea tanar. Iti spun totusi ca nu esti tu in masura sa-mi acorzi mie calificative , macar pentru ca eu am obtinut cateva si inca foarte bune, de la profesorii mei universitari. Acum 17-22 ani. [...] (De violet pe 10 September 2009 la 16:30) The verbal conflict between these two readers continues when Marius (on September 10, 2009 at 18:06) asserts independence of thought and behaviour, in spite of the young age that I have. The reader accuses violet of lack of discernment and of being misinformed and misled by Intact. How violet answers these accusations is characteristic for the category of obedient blog readers to which s/he belongs: @ Marius: Ill put an end (to this quarrel) here, first of all because Ciutacu does not like chatting (oneto-one interaction) on his blog, and secondly, I dont see why I should continue. (By violet on September 10, 2009 at 6:57 p.m.) [Eu pun punct aici, in primul rand pentru ca lui Ciutacu nu-i place chat-ul pe blogul sau, iar in al doilea, nu vad de ce as mai continua. (De violet pe 10 September 2009 la 18:57)] After violets post, the two blog readers will continue posting, each of them being faithful to her/his discursive bias, under the 2nd head post, but, there will be no more direct interaction between the two: they will ignore each other. In terms of fictional or real identity, it is worth mentioning that, in violets pleas against Bsescu, she confesses being proud of belonging to Ciutacus blogging community, not only because people who join the net are above the average (October 29, 2009 at 19:54), but also because she considers Bsescu a drunken sailor (a hint at the Presidents former job as ship commander). According to Dennen (2009: 29), these are examples of marks of Identity via voice, Voice, or writing style. In the researched corpus, there are masculine overtones (directness of address being associated to masculine discursive styles in specialized literature). Older mens positions are encouraged, since young people are judged as immature and more difficult to cope with (meaning, probably, that it is more difficult to influence and manipulate them from an ideological point of view). Actually, there is a permanent blog dispute between younger and older readers. Younger readers consider that older generations are used to safer and calmer times (Marius, in October 30, 2009, at 10:14) when they enjoyed softer socialist policies, while, at present, they feel uncomfortable with tougher neo-liberal economic and social measures. 5. Conclusions In the corpus researched, we have attempted to demonstrate that Victor Ciutacus blog readers of one of his relevant posts (181 comments) use signatures, as well as post content, that may be interpreted as components of their fictional blog identity. We have tried to reveal what stories they tell and what stories they hide, in their blog communication. The analysis had, as a premise, that people open blogs from various reasons. Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht (2004: 225) made the following 5-reason list: Bloggers (that the analysts interviewed) blogged in order to: 1. Update others on activities and whereabouts 2. Express opinions to influence others 3. Seek others opinions and feedback 4. Think by writing 5. Release emotional tension 144

In the case of the blog of political analysis under research, all the five reasons apply, but it is acknowledged by the Harsh Words community that the second reason is the most significant for Victor Ciutacus blog, that is to say, expressing opinions in order to influence others. Moreover, we assume that some (if not most) of the readers already share the blog ideological identity when they start posting comments. Writing about political ideology, reading habits and political participation, Baumer et al. (2011:14) rely on previous studies when they claim that all of our participants predominantly read blogs with whose political ideology they agreed, [but] they do not avoid reading blogs whose ideology conflicts with theirs. This finding may explain why Ciutacus readers are divided into supporters and critics of the blog dominant ideology, while the former category outnumbers the latter. What would be the identity profile of a typical member of this blogging community? Ciutacus readers would share the general technological and social passion of writing on blogs. Then, they would enjoy political analysis and would side with Intact media trust views.They would choose ironic names/pseudonyms, mocking at Romanian political life, they would be middle-aged or young men, of an above-average educational background. Feminine discourse is under-represented, under the influence of the bloggers male values, attitudes and style. The analysis of names/pseudonyms, as well as the presentation of perceptions of blog readers identity by the other members of the community has also assumed that there is a distance between the readers online persona and their private identity. First, we have to mention that there is ambiguity concerning the readers identity in all blogging activities. Nevertheless, what could explain the reasons for which Ciutacus readers hide behind pseudonyms and fake identity declarations? The answer is difficult to provide, we may only speculate that the readers are cautious enough not to take in charge the posted political bias, all the more so as their comments were against the President of the State in 2009. As some commenters expressed, the readers might be afraid to attack the Power, thinking of the security of their families and friends. They might not be brave enough to reveal their real identity, nevertheless, they may and they do attempt at finding a public way of showing their dissatisfaction with their everyday life and at feeling relieved through blogging.

Bibliography Baumer, E., Sueyoshi, M., and Tomlinson, B. (2008). Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging. CHI '08 Proceedings of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 1111-1120). ACM New York, NY, USA http://www.chi2008.org/. Baumer, E., Sueyoshi, M., and Tomlinson, B. (2011). Bloggers and Readers Blogging Together: Collaborative Co-creation of Political Blogs. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), vol. 20, Numbers 1-2: 1-36. Boicu, R. (2011). Discursive Norms in Blogging. Romanian Review of Journalism and Communication, year VI, nr. 1: 54-62. Boicu, R. (2012). Responses to Politically Biased Blog Posts. An Analysis of Comments on a Romanian Journalists Blog. Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations, vol. 14, no.1(26): 39-58. Branea, S. (2011). Communication on forums that belong to news websites. Study case: HOTNEW.RO (The forum Romani in Italia (Romanians in Italy). In G. Drul, L. Roca and R. Boicu (Eds.). The Role of New Media in Journalism (pp. 245-258). Bucharest: The University of Bucharest Publishing House. Dennen, V. P. (2009). Constructing academic alter-egos: identity issues in a blog-based community. Identity in the Information Society, Vol. 2, Number 1: 23-38, DOI: 10.1007/s12394-009-0020-8 Gumbrecht, M. (2004). Blogs as Protected Space. WWW04, New York, NY, USA. Holmes, J. & Stubbe, E. (2003). Feminine Workplaces: Stereotype and Reality. In J. Holmes & M. Meyerhoff. (Eds.). The Handbook of Language and Gender (pp. 573600). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Mcconnell-Ginet, S. (2003). Whats in a Name? Social Labeling and

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Gender Practices. In J. Holmes & M. Meyerhoff. (Eds.). The Handbook of Language and Gender (69-97). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Nardi, B. A., Schiano, D.J., and Gumbrecht, M. (2004). Blogging as Social Activity, or, Would You Let 900 Million People Read Your Diary? CSCW '04 Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work (pp. 222 231) ACM New York, NY, USA https://wiki.cc.gatech.edu/scqualifier/images/9/9b/NardiBlogging_as_social_activity.pdf Schmidt, J. (2007). Blogging practices: An analytical framework. Journal of ComputerMediated Communication, 12(4), article 13: 14091427. Corpus Source: Categoria Replicile zilei, blogul Vorbe grele. www. Ciutacu.ro

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From hero to zero in Web 2.0: online cult heroes. Chuck Norris vs. Fuego
Monica Mitarca University of Bucharest,Bucharest, Romania As we move forward towards a participatory culture, made possible by the Web2.0, new phenomena arise, stirring researchers interest. The online cults around showbiz figures are among these phenomena, mobilizing Internet users to put their creativity to work in formulaic ways. Our paper focuses on two such cases: the Chuck Norris cult enhanced during the January street movements, when it has been taken over and broadcasted by the main TV stations, spreading its awareness to something else than its previous audience and the Fuego anti-cult. Thus, we shall uncover the mechanism underneath this very productive process of creating online content and meaning. For this, well by analyzing the precise, condensed facts attributed to them, and also some of the communication instances where these online cult or anti-cult heroes were circulated, in a secondary, re-signifying process. As such, Chuck Norris has been circulated during the January 2012 street demonstrations, in Romania, as a savior figure the hero who would save the day while Fuego was used, recently, in a similar process, to explain and account for, metaphorically, the political crisis of June and July 2012, in some of the online constructions. Key words: online cult hero, meme, participatory culture, Web 2.0 Web 2.0, defined as the new generation of web based services and communities characterized by participation, collaboration and sharing of information among users online (Annemarie Hunter, Netconcepts48) is the sum of user-generated contents and social interaction online produced with the help of wikis, folksonomies49, blogs and networking sites (idem). That is also the place the new social fabric is shaping up. And inside it, apparently there are new forces operating and working for such a web to form, thicker as a fabric or looser, as a proper spider web. Recently, a series of strong heroic figures started to develop, in the Romanian-based web 2.0, stemming from two characters each, pre-existing and having a definite, strong personal image associated, and also benefiting of awareness from media-related, offline, areas (film industry, respectively, showbiz). Those two characters are Chuck Norris, the good bad guy, type-casted film actor, and Fuego, the bad good guy of Romanian pop music. Theyre online cult heroes50, thus defined according to the specificities of the processes involved in their making as heroes (or, as well prove, as anti-heroes). We shall come back to the concept along the article. The way these characters were taken over by the Romanian web2.0 users and circulated as symbols and beyond, is fascinating but not unexpected for such an unruly medium as the Internet. As they are real persons, with a real life, different from the one projected by these users relating to them in the ways we shall describe later, the whole process is worthwhile analyzing from various perspectives, in order to see whether they converge on some key points or only overlap. Our analysis would go for assessing the core of these cultural constructs, online cult heroes, around the two (Chuck Norris and Fuego); for the first, the analysis will focus on the English language memes (online meaningful constructions, similar to sayings, proverbs and other maxims, with a wider circulation and which are easily memorized and improved in the process, according to Goleman, 2007:51) and then on the protest boards from January 2012 (Bucharest,

48

On http://www.seoglossary.com/article/745, on 29th of June, 2012. Whatever definition one might seek or create, it will reduce to the same idea of participation through producing ones own content to add it up to other peoples content, via various and improved online communication technologies. 49 A folksonomy is the term coined by Thomas Vander Wal, around 2004, to refer to the social collaboration of users on networks who create and manage tags in order to annotate and categorize content (intuitive ways people use to classify online content). Also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing or social tagging. 50 As named in Time magazine issue from March 20, 2006; some of the weird, but wildly popular sayings related to Chuck Norris were quoted and analyzed in an article.

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Bistrita Nasaud and Timisoara); for the second one, we will analyze the Romanian language constructions encountered (disseminated) online. User generated content and its limits As Web2.0 became vastly used by the masses via numerous devices (as opposed to WWWs beginnings, when it has been used predominantly by web-savvy elites, people mastering the social and technical skills see Bell, 2001, Rheingold, 1993), users power to generate online content increased tremendously. This, in turn, resulted in an increased divide between the branded communication by users with self-management and self-marketing skills and the anonymous users, generating content for the benefit of others (Andrew Keen, .Net magazine interview in October 2007). As the familiar notions of media studies (related to mass media, production, ownership, influence, etc.) are challenged by the participatory culture, by the Web2.0, new notions are coined to give account of the changes in the human communication practices. These notions such as, UGC (user generated content), prosumer (not a mere consumer of information, but also a producer), social software, social networking sites, DYI (do-it-yourself) media, data sharing, community building, indymedia (as opposed to hierarchical, elite-centered media), micro-elites are used recently by scholars to describe the new realities of mass-produced communication. (We ultimately get, with each of our papers, to challenge the mass part of each notion in the field for its inefficacy in addressing properly the quantitative aspect of production and consumption; niches and fragmented audiences may count just as heavy as wider, mass audiences, when it comes to certain phenomena.) Nevertheless and concomitantly with the wider social impact they had, the issues correlated to these recent changes are also connected, simultaneously, to money flows and to creative issues. The participatory culture51 specific to web2.0 came with lower aesthetic limits and lower thresholds to our creativity. This means that a person who previously wouldnt have gotten the production means to express himself/herself creatively, now has the free means to do it, via affordable technologies; it also means the previous artistic standards are lower, in terms of aesthetic criteria. Specific to this new form of culture is the continuous production of content, mostly online, which is also binding people together, alongside with allowing them to shape and maintain their own sense of self (blogging is a tool for self-definition just as much or may be more than a tool for sharing information with the others). The notion of affinity applied onto interpersonal online communication can also be used to explain our social interactions Bell and Daly (1984) designed an index, ASI, affinity-seeking instrument, to size up the two dimension of AS: the strategy and the performance. Correlating these notions to users online behavior, the idea that most of the prosumer behavior is conjoining strategy and performance in order to get affinity seems to be a pretty effective model. If we see all our online activities as affinity seeking, we should circumscribe them to a combination of poetics and prosaics a mixture depending on the creativity involved into the processes of communicating ones self. When it comes to the creative dimension of all our online encounters, Katya Mandoki differentiates, in Everyday Esthetics between poetics as the aesthetic production and reception of the artistic, and prosaics as the aesthetic dimension in everyday life (Mandoki, 2007:51). Mandoki noted, prosaics is particularly at stake through the strategies of constitution of and interaction with personal and collective identities (idem). Thus, in online communication, identities are created and actualized constantly with the help of individual and collective strategies. We dare advancing the hypothesis that all creation behind the Chuck Norriss memes is part of a process of creating individual and collective identities online. Thus is the power of social media. Nevertheless, in the trends opened by information and communication technologies, phrases such as relational aesthetics occur to explain what happens to art during prosumer era. Bourriaud phrase is explained as forms of art which focus less on the production of an object or an image, but instead seek to instigate new social relationships. Interest in new forms of
51

Term coined in 2006 by Henry Jenkins (and his team) to describe the way communication technology puts creative tools in the hands of ordinary people who were, by then, mere consumers (in Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century ).

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collaboration in the making of artworks now extends to exploration of collaboration as the artwork (in McQuire, 2010:7). In this respect, as each CN fact (or meme) occurring online may be the result of such an esthetics, its likely to be analyzed and explained as collective production, subjected to the same criteria of production as the others. We should discuss a little bit more the meme concept, as its one with roots in neuroscience and with only remote filiations in the wider social studies. It all started with the scientists interest in sharing emotion and form. In November 2006, the Scientific American wrote (p.60): populations of mirror neurons in the insula become active both when the test participants experience emotion and when they see it expressed by others. In other words, the observer and the observed share a neural mechanism that enables a form of direct experiential understanding. (p. 60). This is the scientific explanation for the cells in our brains mimicking or responding to the actions or emotions of the other, a branch called memetics. Starting from here (and from Robert Aungers work, The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think, Daniel Goleman addressed the issue of lower class memes, media induced or at least propagated with the help of the online content. He identifies them as impact ideas, entities reproducing itself by passing from one person to the other, very powerful, norm delivery systems inside a culture, operating on the affective level (2007:58). The easiest way to explain them is to envisage them as formulaic, strong and easy to remember phrases or assertions people agree with even without realizing they do. Its a sort of wisdom emanating from the people, giving them also the satisfaction of having created something which lasts. As everyone can feel responsible for carrying them, nobody really is, since they are collective creation. And thats the power of the memes even if we admit not all the sayings related to Chuck Norris rise to the occasion, some of them, the memorable ones, do, due to the qualities of one might call social media. When searching social media on Wikipedia.com, one gets to the definition provided by Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein in their 2010 "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media"52: a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content. Social media is a consumer generated media, opposed to the industrial media, produced for a profit by companies orchestrating their business and editorial efforts of a corporative manner. Concepts such as social authority, vanity or social capital are related to social media debate and incipient theory: theres an assumption, among theorist, that deep involvement in social media is a measure of a persons need of earning authority, online and, subsequently, offline, and their efforts to get it may be interpreted as efforts to gather social capital defined, in sociology and economics, in relation with the capacity of groups to be working together, stressing on trust, reciprocity and mutuality, but with newer dimensions added lately, as Web2.0 is pushing us into expanding our view on communication and collaboration. This new dimension is the economic value obtained in institutional or individual networking, as Alexander Flor ventured to add in his research report53. Meaning, users engage in communication and information transactions which lead to them constructing a reputation online, a harvestable reputation on the long run. In order to get there, online users first communicate they put their communication competencies (Dell Hymes term is referring to the specific abilities of a person to use language actively and productively language, within the cultural paradigm) at work; these competencies are actualized in communication sequences, where they get tested and improved with each interaction and each act of producing meaning, in conversations or as discourses addressed to the others. As such, web-based content serves as a tool of personal expression, connecting at the same time users in multiple, polymorphous and floating virtual groups. We may represent this process, visually, as an ocean of dots which light up intermittently, activating at that moment a wider or smaller grid of connections, sometimes overlapping, sometimes, not (its a visual model we created). In this model, theres a time and space dimension, but also a dimension giving account of
52 53

In Business Horizons 53(1): 5968. Design, Development and Testing of an Indigenous Knowledge Management System Using Mobile Device Capture and Web 2.0 Protocols, published online - but also in Flor, Alexander G. 2004. Social Capital and the Network Effect in Building eCommunity Centers for Rural Development (J.K. Lee, Editor). Bangkok andTokyo: UNESCAP and the ADB Institute.

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the intensity of the process (based on the simultaneity of the communication acts). Intensity, in this respect, is a matter of how much the network is used to what propensity, by how many users at a time. As the platforms multiply (sites, apps, etc.), content earns in variety: from videos on YouTube, sound clips on Trilulilu, own pages on various SNS, personalized to contributions on various wiki/pedias, own blogs, twitting, pinteresting, and further to creating collaborative content through apps (see the recent project of Pegas, Inaripeaza un Pegas). Issues following from this are related to ownership/copyright, to public content, privacy, control and surveillance and limits are, usually, related to ownership of the original idea since the collaborative Internet subcultures rarely awards users for their creativity (rare are the cases of users who got to get rich or strike gold without intensive marketing of themselves or their ideas/projects). Chuck Norris The real person The latest Chuck Norris legend is unprecedented in the Romanian media. There was no other figure to have crossed the border and turned from a human being (actor) into a legend, based on his perceived features in the fiction pieces he has been cast in as a character. Its true that, a decade ago, Bruce Willis seemed to have reached the point he could have turned into a cult hero, but the two criteria he didnt meet were: the saying involving his name never got to a fixed form (they were rather flexible mentions of his name in various context, related to his heroism in movies or to his ability of staying alive or dying hard) and they didnt subsisted long enough to become memes. Why is Chuck Norris good and why bad? First, we should mention that he is good because his violent, bad acts in movies restore order. He is, thus, bad, from the media effects perspective, because he uses violence to enforce law an oxymoronic situation, incidentally exploited heavily by the creators of the Chuck Norris legend, (who were, perhaps, totally unaware of the similitude between the operations underlying their content production and the ideological operations used in action movie where the hero acts the same as the villain, only with the backing of the law). The legend around Chuck Norris started offline (at TV, Conan OBrien started telling jokes about CN on his segment, Late Night with Conan OBrien), and then had spread online not in the Romanian language online content, but in English. But, after a few years of facts piling up on his behalf on various steady websites or as a content flow on social networking sites, Chuck Norriss legend trespassed its own statute and became a real person again, a hero one to be summoned to help real people (see the case of January protests, in Romania, but also the case cited by Wikipedia as an instance of melting down the thin line between real life/offline, mass media and online. Between reality and fiction, which, now, earns multiple dimensions (since Walker, the Texan Ranger is a first hand fiction, created inside the industrial, profit-based media, and the legend of Chuck Norris is a fiction of another level, harvesting different types of popular culture symbols). The other quoted example (on Wikipedia.com) of Chuck Norris being involved as a fictional hero in a protest was Only Chuck Norris manages to achieve a bachelor's degree in scheduled time mesh hung inside the University of Bamberg campus. Its not only that the film star was never around here, nor related in any way to Romania, but him being chosen as the hero to save Romania by the protesters (as we shall see on some protest boards in January-February 2012, Bucharest, Bistria Nsud and Timioara) was the result of the process under scrutiny in this paper, a process which is not confined to Romania, nor specific to, but here, under the specific circumstances of the January, 2012, riots and protesting movements, evolved of a specific manner. The phases of the process will be presented as two collective signification processes, using newer mechanisms, never to be met before the Web2.0. But whos Chuck Norris, anyway? Chuck Norris (Carlos Ray Chuck Norris), born March, 10, 1940, in Ryan, Oklahoma is a martial artist and Hollywood actor, whose choice of roles, as he has type-casted himself, due to his martial arts skills, has made him the aura of a tough guy. Hes famous for the TV series Walker, Texan Ranger, but also for The Delta Force, The Hitman, Missing in Action, Firewalker and Sidekicks all of them, made during the last two decades of the 20th century. Hes got a black belt 150

in Tang Soo Do and Tae Kwon Do, had establishes 32 karate schools in the US and won a Triple Crown for the highest number of tournament wins54. As such, around 2005, on the Internet theres been a spree of Chuck Norris facts (following the only traceably incipient spree around Vin Diesel 55), some assertions related to his almost supernatural powers. As we can read on Wikipedia56, the facts are ascribing implausible or even impossible facts to Norris57. Yet, when, in December 2007, a book gathering all these facts was released by Gotham Books58, Chuck Norris the real person filed suit on the grounds of trademark infringement, unjust enrichment (sic!) and privacy issues, among others. Which was a statement of limits, as the actor previously has declared to have been amused by the facts attributed to him. Leaving jokes aside59, he admitted each time he addressed the issue publicly that theres a God and we should not attribute to humans such super-natural powers60. The online cult hero Chuck Norris was constructed as a super-being, endowed with all improbable powers, defying all or at least some natural laws. These are the main information, for the facts above-mentioned are a different story. The spree of online communication involving his name turning him into a legend, a hero of a different kind than the one he really is started worldwide at the beginning of the Century, but recently evolved, in Romanian based Web2.0, in a collective creation process whose results shall be analyzed further. Far from being a mere tough guy (usually associated to no-brains), Chuck Norris the real person has strong political conservatory views, wrote books on Christianity, positive thinking and writes conservative columns, while developing various charitable and philanthropic campaigns. Searching the Internet for an explanation or for other information, we came across a debate (question, answer and further comments) initiated on www.reddit.com, under the thread, Explain Like Im 5. The question raised by a user was Why is Chuck Norris an online cult hero?, and the answers were (we sampled some of the answers): From what I remember, it actually started around 2005 with the site http://4q.cc that had a Vin Diesel fact generator. Eventually, the fact generator was expanded to include Mr. T and, of course, Chuck Norris. The Chuck Norris facts, combined with the Walker, Texas Ranger lever bit that Conan was doing around the same time, sort of cemented Chuck Norris as an internet demigod61. Another notable comment was, I've heard the claim that even the Vin Diesel facts were an riff on the SNL Bill Brasky skits from the late 90s, as they have more than a passing resemblance in tone and style. (by user destroytheheart), tracking things a bit further back. Nevertheless, by starting with Ive heard, the user unwittingly pins down the fact that all these are rumors, half-information one cant rely on. A few more comments shows us theres a real confusion regarding this legend thats how legends and myths are created, apparently out of nothing and impossible to track back completely: I like to believe that Chuck
54 55

As one can find out on http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001569/bio. Facts which didnt even originated around Chuck Norris, but Vin Diesel (starting from the popular saying Nothing can scratch Vin Diesel and developing into a trend, according to reddit.com). Also, Bruce Willis has almost been the recipient of a similar legend, around the time he used to play in action movies, but his sudden turn to psychological films made the general public withdraw their vote of confidence and sympathy, since the newer characters played by the famous actor were not so clear cut, rather problematic in movies with characters not so polarized (on a good-vs. bad axis, but rather sliding confusingly on a scale between good and bad. 56 We think its nothing but fair to quote Wikipedia-based materials, articles and information as well as other texts on the Web2.0, since were talking about collaborative content within the wider participatory culture online. 57 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris_facts, last consulted July the 12 th, 2012, 23.23. 58 The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400 facts about the World's Greatest Human . 59 and, as we may read on Wikipedia.com, on October 7, 2009 Tyndale House Publishers issued The Official Chuck Norris Fact Book, which was co-written and officially endorsed by Norris, on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris_facts. 60 It's funny. It's cute. But here's what I really think about the theory of evolution: it's not real. It is not the way we got here. In fact, the life you see on this planet is really just a list of creatures God has allowed to live. We are not creations of random chance. We are not accidents. There is a God, a Creator, who made you and me. We were made in His image, which separates us from all other creatures. By the way, without Him, I don't have any power. But with Him, the Bible tells me, I really can do all things and so can you Wikipedia quoting ^ "On Chuck Norris 'mania' sweeping the Net", WorldNetDaily. 2006-10-23. 61 http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/n2wwc/eli5_why_is_chuck_norris_an_online_cult_hero/

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Norris's online cult status arose originally from Conan O'Brien's "Walker Texas Ranger Lever (user crutz) and I dunno, man. Chuck Norris has a pretty strong record on the karate scene. 183-102 is a pretty good record, and six years as champion of any sport is impressive. His acting is stupid, and his politics are ridiculous, but there is little denying he was actually kind of a badass. (user averyv). He is just a person who has such a ridiculous set of characteristics and credentials that he lends himself easily to being exaggerated. If you watch Walker, Texas Ranger you will see how absurd both his acting and the show are. Combined with his endorsement of the total gym, his ginger beard and martial arts past, and you essentially have the perfect storm of comedic material. (user YoungSerious). Chuck Norris being an unstoppable, God-like badass became a meme, and people still remember it. (user mikekozar). It is possible these responses/comments would account for the whole range of possible views on what this online cult hero phenomenon might be; yet, we would, nevertheless, go further, in search of other, more theoretical, perspectives. Chuck Norris: Facts Popular saying or empty symbolic constructs? Far from being an individual expression on a given subject, the facts the memes, as we defined them before attributed to Chuck Norris represent some form of collective creation. There are some sites and forums where users challenge the others to come up with other facts, truths about Chuck Norris, but from your own memories, not translations (Adevaruri despre Chuck Norris, din amintirile voastre, NU traduceri, the original thread name on the forum)62. So, for a variable period of time since the original posting, users do address the challenge and come up with new facts. The variety in themes/threads, in creativity and in linguistic abilities of those facts can be traced back, in research, to users variety and skills; yet, since its not our focus to account for it, we only mentioned it as possible follow up. The first thing we should notice is that these facts are presented as sentences of variable length which resemble popular sayings and proverbs. They ascribe to CN a universe of meaning, making him a central character in our human evolution and in our civilization. Questions arising are, do we need one person through which everything should be explained (seriously or satirically)? Is he a sort of clown, a god, a trickster deus otiosus or the Kings fool? Legends, myths or mere fictive, heroic acts? The facts associated with or attributed to Chuck Norris are of a satirical nature. Prima facie, they may represent a sort of popular creations based on intertextuality, a way the Internet users play with language and knowledge of their own social context, while creating online content. As most of them are presented as paradoxes, as implausible facts attributed to a person, their own grandeur and exaggeration is possible to have made them so popular. Here there are some of the facts circulating widely on the Internet: Chuck Norris flosses with an electric fence. When Chuck Norris takes a break of killing people, there will still be victims. Chuck Norris can kill 2 stones with 1 bird. There are fifteen Top Ten facts about Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris won a round of blackjack, with one card. Chuck Norris doesn't believe in the periodic table, he only belives (sic!) in the element of SURPRISE!! Chuck Norris can copy-paste in real life. Curiosity didn't kill the cat. Chuck Norris did. When you say no to Chuck Norris, he takes it as a death threat. Chuck Norris can play Blu Rays on a record player.
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Some example of this can be found at the Internet address http://forum.softpedia.com/index.php?s=7ca7c8a6d1e33961d626c5657556c13e&showtopic=380969&st=36 consulted July the 10th, 2012.

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Chuck Norris once leaned on the Tower of Pisa.... We selected these out of the few hundred existing online, in order to give account of the vast array of subjects they are related to. Our analysis would first aim to find the resorts of this continuous production of meaning around a person not so circulated today by the showbiz whose glorious days as an action movies actor have been in the past and then would categorize the facts according to some key features and criteria. As Jean-Jacques Boutaud wrote in Communication, Semiotics and Advertising Signs: Theories, Models and Applications, we live in a world of meanings, most of the times, secondary meanings, conveyed as connotations to which advertising helped creating massively. Theres an inflation of signs63, and to this regime, the Internet with its democratic participation in production as well as in consumption contributed just as much as advertising (and more generally, popular culture) did, the last century. In this rich climate of meaning, we see clearly to what extent the passage from code to a codifying process all too vaguely defined and likely to result in confusing meanings or to lead to multiple meanings will encourage advertising to dare all and challenge everything (p. 59, our translation). Its likely that, in this very context, common people, who merely got from a consumer to a prosumer position, would dare play the advertising game themselves and become creators of tiny bits of productions, similes to the outcome of advertising and with a greater attractiveness. Our playful behavior as prosumers online enables us to turn the knowledge we got as consumers into productive knowledge. Thus, turning popular saying and making them over as to encompass a newer target element such as CN is an operation advertising uses for decades. It can borrow meaningful phrases from Shakespeare and sell soap, beer or honey with them. The same process is involved in the Chuck Norriss case: historical facts are singled out and given new explanation, new perspectives or simply another hero attached (Chuck Norris once leaned on the Tower of Pisa.... or even better, Chuck Norris used to dig ditches as a young man. This is when the Grand Canyon was formed.) Yet, heroism and action-oriented facts, ascribing a universe and explaining it in relationship to some Chuck Norris-ness are not the only important threads; theres always CNs appearance (his reddish beard, his bodily hair already unfashionable, etc.), his quick anger and apparently jumpy demeanor (tributary to production recipes, script and a whole action movie ideology and not at all specific to Chuck Norris the real person, according to all online sources), and so on. Its interesting to see how many of these memes or facts are indexes of a new vision on identity. Chuck Norris is a person, a fictional character, a state of mind, but also a sum of parts: hes sometimes identified with his beard, his feet (and his roundhouse kick), his fist, his eyes (eyesight): a true post-modern vision on identity. Legendary facts They construct a legend out of a person, but the process involves a handful of features related to the real person and a lot of aspects related to the specific social, political and cultural context of the society creating it. As there are numerous meanings of the word legend, we shall present two of the main directions we could use it in this particular case. One of them is, a non-historical or unverifiable story handed down by tradition from earlier times and popularly accepted as historical is a larger view applied on our case. The other one, a collection of stories about an admirable person (or the person who is the center of such stories) is more suitable, as theres really a collection of stories, an admirable person and a very productive audience. The first one presents us with some other view, stressing on the non-historical and unverifiable story handed down by tradition. An applied reading would be, Chuck Norriss facts are non-historical stories, unverifiable under no circumstance and handed down in a different way than these things used to be handed down before the Internet we shall outline below.

The Romanian edition, Comunicare, semiotic i semne publicitare. Teorii, modele i aplicaii Tritonic, 2003, p. 5859.
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Mass media substituted oral communication in its role of handing down traditions (Coman, 2003); the omnipresent media tells us the same old stories, in always newer forms/shapes; with each new channel or platform theres an avalanche of re-telling the same stories. As such, a handful of publications, radio and TV stations and a couple of hundred sites fill the place left empty by the village storyteller, destitute old, tradition-based sayings, invent and circulate new folklore, new puns, new legends and always newer myths to explain the same old facts. The role of the media in telling the grounding stories of a culture (see Hollywood productions covering European historical events and the newer trend on covering apparently historical facts in HBO TV series such as Game of Thrones, Borgia, etc.) is accomplished as widely and as variedly possible. Legends may appear out of everything, once a channel or a media company decides to invest in promoting a product. Thus, if Chuck Norris was not a legend in itself, once a player in the movie industry or showbiz64 may have been interested in him and his legend, he may become one rapidly. Is this a secondary circuit, a secondary signifying process or a completely new routine, never foreseen by the older media and made possible with the Web2.0? Mythological facts The mythical aspect of the CN facts and the way they are culturally constructed is interesting to explore and analyze; since here we only have one character whose attributed, related facts explain everything (Creation, several historical facts, natural laws), there seems to be a certain connection to myth and mythology. Yet, as theres a great boundary confusion between myths and other textual constructions, some themes can show up also in other types of texts, such as legends, fairytales, epic stories, ballads, popular novels, etc. (Coman, 2008:288). Its inside thi s mythical paradigm we should try to find this particular cases compliance to theoretical criteria. Is Chuck Norris a mythical figure, a legendary one or a mere online cult hero, as hes been defined online and offline, in recent writings? We want to challenge the online cult hero perspective and add to it some mythical dimension. On a brief analysis, one can notice some threads underlying the facts. We shall present them in the table below, classifying them according to types of myths (Coman, 2003 and 2008).
Types of myths
Cosmological myths

Facts
Chuck Norris used to dig ditches as a young man. This is when the Grand Canyon was formed. When Chuck Norris saw the true form of Zeus, Zeus turned into ashes. Chuck Norris can turn the sun off and on by clapping his hands. (similar to the Moon/Sun myths) The universe is under Chuck Norriss hat. Chuck Norris once leaned on the Tower of Pisa.... It is an obvious fact that Chuck Norris has been to Mars, seeing as there is absolutely NO life on Mars. Someone talks to a friend of Chuck's in a bad manner, Chuck walks up from behind the man and, taps his shoulder, the man turns around and becomes stone. If a Chuck Norris round house kick met another it would cut a hole in the space time continuum. Chuck Norris roundhouse-kicked the faces of his best fans into the side of Mount Rushmore. - none identified yet the end of the world as we know it does not rhyme with CN. Hes an optimistic agent, working for the continuity of the human civilization. Chuck Norris could have stopped the Metrodome roof from collapsing. On July 30, 1975 one man pissed off Chuck Norris, his name was Jimmy Hoffa, we all know how that turned out! Dont we? The only reason Osama Bin Laden is dead is because they finally let Chuck Norris into Pakistan... and others

Etiological myths

Eschatological myths

Heroic myths

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It happens than Chuck Norris himself produced some of the movies and TV se ries he starred in, so its been the self interest just as much as the interest of the producer.

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Theres a high degree of creativity embedded in the process of creating these facts: how else would have appeared saying Chuck Norris can make a stop sign say go? Or Chuck Norris can punch a Cyclops in between the eyes? Beyond knowing what a Cyclops is, one should play with the knowledge and decide challenging it; there a definite challenge in the idea that stop signs can say something (a personification operating there even beyond the CN). Underlying the process of creating them, theres a playfulness, a inclination towards games and playing, previously used, exerted, circulated in oral communication on a smaller scale and in smaller groups, which, once applied on this very fecund ground (Chuck Norris the legend), led to a folklore never imagined before. The sheer size of the population involved in this process (and, for that matter, in similar processes) on and off, as we tried to model before is unprecedented. The facts can be further categorized according to 1.) the rhetorical operations involved in their creation and 2.) the threads, themes, subjects brought from reality to either prop the legend of CN or to be validated in a backwards process, as current tools to creating the online reality. The most difficult categorization is according to the rhetoric figures used. First, since most of them represent paradoxes, the researcher would be tempted to include all in the above mentioned category and only then create subcategories. Paradoxical, about all memes, is that they represent outrageously courageous or impossible actions related to CN. Since the memes are hundreds and increasing everyday, our classification can only give us a hint on the extent of the rhetorics used in creating them. Thus, we can find among the hundreds facts paradoxes, related to either natural laws or other known facts such as, Newton's 3rd Law never applies to Chuck Norris or Chuck Norris can score a 181 on a game of darts or Chuck Norris sprinted 2 marathons backwards. But we can also find puns (Chuck Norris does not get frostbite. Chuck Norris bites frost. Or Chuck Norris told the Bermuda Triangle to get lost), paraprosdokian (Curiosity didn't kill the cat. Chuck Norris did.), oxymoron, hyperbole (The sky is the limit, unless of course youre Chuck Norris; Chuck Norris knows EVERY word in EVERY language plus ten thousand more! ; Chuck Norris can grind diamonds into coal.; Chuck Norris wrote his own IMDB profile using the power of his beard) metaphors, inversions (Chuck Norris eats a cereal of bowl at breakfast), chiasmus (Chuck Norris doesn't die. Death Chuck Norrisses. Or Chuck Norris doesn't pay the government, the government pays him.), anaphoras, litotes and many others. Also, some of them are metadiscursive approaches to the phenomenon (There are fifteen Top Ten facts about Chuck Norris.), as well as dialogical aspects in them (those mentioning CNs real reactions, as a real person, to the facts or their creators/readers). Theres a whole semantic universe in in these facts, and figures of speech can only give us a half measure of their power as tools and carriers of the online cult around Chuck Norris. On the other hand, the vast array of subjects Chuck Norris is connected to, related to, associated with, gives account on several needs: certain areas we still need to explain to ourselves; the facts which still remained without an answer, no matter how much science evolved; some controversial facts we still need to address, talk about and negotiate, in terms of meanings. Some of the paradoxes are just as playful as we should not try to find some meaning behind them being chosen. Also, the choice of subjects is an individual matter although the creation process is an anonymous one and the legend is created collectively, the facts themselves are created individually. So its likely that some choice of subject should be tributary to personal, individual concerns, idiosyncrasies and even to coincidence. Notice how some of the categories in the tables below do overlap with the categories in the other tables.
Types of subjects Creation or creation (they explain the origin of things yet to be understood). Facts Tectonic plate shifting occurs when Chuck Norris does his splits. Acid rain isn't caused by pollution, Chuck Norris just roundhouse kicked a man who had just eaten a lemon. He falls as powder to this day.

Social or historical facts Obama voted for Chuck Norris.

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(blending things we know The killer bees stopped their northern advance at Texas, cause about social life into the Chuck Norris has family in Oklahoma. legend of CN) Chuck Norris' whereabouts were unknown from 1939-45, when he was found walking around Hiroshima, saying "the last thing I knew was falling out of a plane". Chuck Norris only drinks Chuck Daniels. Chuck Norris bowled a 301 after constructing another pin out of his beard hair. Chuck Norris hit a homerun while playing for the Dallas Cowboys. The Titanic sunk because Chuck Norris ran into it during his swim. Apollo 11 LOST TAPE! "One small step for man, one giant leap for Chuck Norris." Media induced content, The world ends on December 21st, 2012. Only because that's circulating media symbols when Chuck Norris masters the Falco Punch. Chuck Norris made Ronald McDonald the Joker. Contrary to popular belief, Chuck Norris starred in the Final Destination series - As the role of death. Natural law defying facts Chuck Norris has an infinite amount of chromosomes. His DNA is made of solid gold. Chuck Norris is so fast, he can turn the light off and get into bed before it gets dark. Chuck Norris can see his breath in the summer. Chuck Norris can grind diamonds into coal. Light year was created to measure the distances you would travel if Chuck Norris Roundhouse kicks you. Chuch Norris eats one sided pancakes for breakfast.

Chuck Norris The Romanian hero Ever since the January 2012 protests, where CNs name showed up on boards, in the street (that is, offline, as opposed to the environment his legend started and was built), there has been added another phase to the signification process Chuck Norris has been subjected. Thus, if the first phase involved his being taken over by the online and constructed into a super-being, capable of doing every unimaginable thing getting as far from Chuck Norris the real person as possible the second phase operates backwards. The reversed process means Chuck Norris the legend is re-signified into a human again some real person who can come up and save the day. The boards of some protesters, which read CHUCK NORRIS Help!, are only half mockery (a further research, on reception, would go further into this; our intuition is that CN is brought into the game first in order to show to the politicians that they are cartoon-like figures and the only one who could fight them properly is a legendary character, who already got to be fictional, turned human again. Yet, beyond this, theres a certain sense of desperation of the protesters, also to be revealed by further inquiry into the phenomenon).

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Figure 2. Protests in Bucharest, January 2012

]
Figure 3. Bistrita Nasaud. The protesters.

The boards present in the protests were: CHUCK NORRIS Help!!!! (with a variable number of exclamation marks), Chuck Norris for President, Chuck Norris Save us from ACTA and Snt Chuck Norris! Am sosit. Unde sntei? (in original; the translation would be I am Chuck Norris, I got here already. Where are you?). Its remarkable that only one of them is in Romanian and also, easily to attribute to a person over 3565. All of them exploit the Facebook legend of Chuck Norris, which started to circulate among the Romanian users of FB; nevertheless, they express the seriousness of the situation, the sense theres no alternative, politically, other than a fictional, legendary character and also demonstrate a certain playfulness, a propensity towards the linguistic games, creative minds (especially the last one, appearing in Timisoara, on a freezing protest night when almost nobody showed up). The protester carrying the board had his face covered and stood up, with the board in his hands, in the February cold. His cover up can be read first as a method to hide his identity to pass as Chuck Norris and second, as a protection against the cold outside.

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Due to the used twice instead of an u; in 1993, there has been a change in use of this letter and some of the people who were finishing their studies back then kept it and refused the new graphy.

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Figure 4. Timisoara. I am Chuck Norris. I am here already. Where are you all? Another important aspect is that the boards were not important per se, but in terms of their circulation in the media they were there so that the television cameras should get them on film and disseminate them further. And they were news coverage, by Antena 1, Pro TV and Acasa TV, of the funny protest boards: Its not the first time Chuck Norris gets around here, in Romania, this year. Chuck Norris, Help Us! was one of the messages found on the protesting boards in Bucuresti. Timisoara responded with, I am Chuck Norris, I am here already. Where are you?, or Help us, Chuck Norris is the hilarious message which made its way to 9gag.com, the site with over one million three hundred fans on Facebook. (Stirile Pro TV, March 14 and February the 20th). The only inadvertence, in the coverage of such a protest board, was in the news lead (Romania does not lose its sense of humor not in its hardest moments. The message to Chuck Norris or Photoshop or reality, an image got to get thousands of views on one of the most popular humor sites around, 9gag.com) and in their category selection (under showbuz/fun). But the inadvertence is easily explained by newsroom policies, since online verification and credibility are as such as journalist would not take for granted any photograph, no matter how brilliant it looks. It happens that many protesters, bloggers and other photographs, including news photo reporters, so that theres no doubt the protest board has been there; nevertheless, the newsroom decision of pacing the event under the fun may have had yet other reasons, such as de-tensioning the explosive social climate. But thats just a hypothesis, although strongly supported by other media coverage of the same picture (ziare.com and other news aggregators online). Fuego The bad singer Paul Sergiu Surugiu, known as Fuego, is a Romanian pop singer with a great appeal to housewives, middle aged women and other audiences defined as low earners, working class, consumers of tabloid media and soap operas/telenovelas. His growing legend follows the model opened by Chuck Norris, but with some noticeable difference. First, its mostly about image there are no facts attached, no fixed form sayings, but rather images created with the help of specialized, easy-to-use software to enhance digital image. The few lines appearing underneath the pictures are redundant; they dont invent anything new about the guy; they merely take over some content already associated to Fuego and interpret it. Thus, a picture of Fuego underneath which theres the message, Mama, y u not impodobesti bradul? (Mom, Y U not decorate the [Christmas] tree already? represents the main message in most of the creations and can be traced back to a Fuego song, Mom, please decorate the tree, a song correlated to Christmas time a lot less imaginative and innovative than any of the facts attributed to Chuck Norris.

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Figure 5. Mama, Y U no decorate the tree? We should underline the fact theres no other public figure to have earned a similar transformative process, until the recent Victor Ponta plagiarism scandal (where similar creative forces turned our prime minister in a cartoon-like figure of an extent one cannot probe yet, as the scandals unfolding. line anyone could trace back.

Figure 6. Fuego has just visited this person's FB profile

Another type of content associated to Fuego presents the singer as someone important without having any reason to be so, someone important but void of any meaning. Thus, two very circulated online overwritten photographs66 are 1) a picture of Fuego, framed with the Facebook blue, saying, Fuego just visited this persons profile, with a white arrow pointing to the profile picture of the person sharing it and 2), a processed image with Victor Ponta, the infamous prime minister these days and Fuegos head on somebody elses body. The legend reads, Ponta, ignored by Fuego in Brussels. This is an example of content exploiting the sensitive political context where Ponta insisted he should go to Brussels, whose presence there was neither welcome, nor necessary. This time, the mechanism is that through which Ponta is belittled and diminished even more in satire than hes been in the news media, by showing the audiences that not even Fuego (whos important without being really important) acknowledges him as an important person. In a way, is an ideological operation to stress on Pontas illegitimacy as the head of the Romanian government and Fuego is used as a tool.

Figure 7. Ponta, ignored by Fuego at Bruxelles

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The overwritten photographs which, sometimes, are mere text messages on colored squares, are another phenomenon of the Web2.0 and especially of Facebook, deserving a whole research.

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A third message circulating either as a image plus text or simply as saying (just as in CNs case) is the statement, Fuego never sleeps during winter. This is intertextuality to the summer of 2012s heavy rotation list song, During summer, I never sleep (Eu vara nu dorm, sang by Connect-R) and plays on the same context Fuego is being associated with the winter holidays for one of his songs, Mom, please decorate the tree!.

Figure 8. I never sleel during winter

Yet, Fuego received recently the help of the media, in the shape of editorial content in tabloid magazines. Cornelia Ionescu, editor in chief of Star magazine, expressed, in the editorial in the 14th of June issue of the weekly publication, entitled Fuego and the envy of the mediocre people, her solidarity with the singer and underlined his vocal qualities, his exceptional career, dissociating herself from the mass of detractors she confessed she wouldnt understand. Her passionate plea for Fuego can be read in many ways, but the word mediocre, applied onto the detractors of Fuego is the core of the rhetoric used by the writer: the confusion between massive audiences and value as a singer, between having a good voice and, again, the value of the music resulted. The confusion should help us address the real issue here: theres a class clash between Fuegos audience and the online cult anti -hero Fuego: the latter are highly educated people who may have picked up Fuego for his apparently innocent, non-problematic, serene lyrics and turned it into an epitome of simplicity. The kind of jokes around Fuego are always related to what he is not. He is not an intellectual and him appearing on TV with spectacles which might have turned him look intellectual was rapidly sanctioned online: Whats worse than seeing Fuego on TV? Seen Fuego with glasses on. Two models, one process As the two got online cult heroes (with variations, Fuego being somewhere between an online anti-cult hero and a online cult anti-hero), they suffered at least a couple of transformation, as we have been showing above. But, beyond that, the way these constructions around them image and word or only words got to be turned into memes given their power onto the cultural climate and their epidemic dissemination and circulation, has to be read as any image: In each of its manifestations: presentation (of the object), anecdotization (inserting the object in the respective culture) and metaphorization (adding value to it), image has an institutive (of transforming the product into sign) and coagulating, declining the social paradox ad infinitum. (Frumusani, 2005:166). According to this schema, stage 1 would consist, in one reading, in the whole time CN made his notoriety as an actor, stage 2 would consist in the first period his name started to be circulated in sayings and stage 3, turning him into a metaphor, is the current stage, when all assertions related to Chuck Norris have another meaning, mediating between the denotation and connotations.

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From hero to zero: Online cult heroes Despite the fact both our heroes are encountered apparently evenly in the Romanian Web2.0, on similar sites or contexts, there are noticeable differences in their circulation. While CN is to be found mostly on specialized sites or on special forums dedicated to him (chucknorrisfacts.com, softpedia.com), but also on Facebook and recently, in the traditional media, following the above mentioned protests , Fuego is mostly on Facebook, but also on 9gag, a very popular joke and satirical site. According to our findings, theres a big difference between the two online cult heroes for quantitative and also qualitative reasons. Number-wise, Chuck Norris outnumbers Fuego, the facts related to him being as much as a few hundreds or even a thousand, according to some accounts. Yet, Fuegos legend is only at the beginning, and his being taken over by the traditional media in this new capacity is adding up to it. Although both of them are showbiz performers thus, not being themselves for the public in most of their apparitions CN is being constructed as an omnipotent hero, while Fuego is presented, satirically, as an anti-hero67. The table below would sum up specifics of both and explain the process.
Chuck Norris Actor (US) but not only. Writer of books on Creation and on inner peace and other editorial content. Values: Conservative (family, country, Christianity) In showbiz: - roles as a law enforcer, somebody who restores order THROUGH VIOLENCE (bad guy turned good as hes got fine purposes). In the media: - gap between his perceived image by those who dont discern the character from the real person (who tend to identify CN with his roles) and the image CN has for his conservative political position Facts: Constructed as a omni-potent, omni-present hero, defying his own hic et nunc. A demi-god, to be feared and revered, who defies natural laws. Traditional media: Circulated on a secondary stage in the media in news reports trying to explain the protest boards. Fuego Singer (Romania) Values: Family/love. No social concerns, no wider message. In showbiz: - music with positive, soothing lyrics. Started with love songs. NON-VIOLENT (good guy turned bad as hes got no purposes). In the media: - no scandals attached, positive media coverage - bad press from satire groups and morning news guys with editorial comments on reality (Neatza/Antena 1) Facts: Defined as a void figure, lacking distinctive features, onto which one can copy/paste a limited array of things. Traditional media: Circulated constantly in the Romanian media, since hes still active in showbiz. Yet, some of the instances are satirical and do not address the newer cult anti-hero, but the real singer and his performance in the media. IMAGES

WORDS

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Defined as main character in a dramatic or narrative work who is characterized by a lack of traditional heroic qualities, such as idealism or courage,answers.com or a protagonist who lacks the attributes that make a heroic figure, as nobility of mind and spirit, a life or attitude marked by action or purpose, and the like (on dictionary.reference.com). Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/anti-hero#ixzz21NCN1iVQ

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Another noticeable difference (yet to be documented in a follow up to this research, oriented on use) is related to these online cults audience. Chuck Norriss cult has a mixed audience, with two strains converging on the same content (young, educated, critical audience deriving pleasure from creating content, manifesting predominantly on Facebook, using CN legend in various circumstances, on one hand and an audience on forums, dedicated to the legend and manifesting themselves on dedicated threads and sites, on the other). Fuego has his first hand audience (that of his music) middle aged women from the middle class, and his anti-cult is composed mostly of critical, educated people, who construct Fuego as the other, the epitome of the star figure having nothing to say (to them). * Either we see them as everyday esthetics creations, as memes, sayings, proverbs, paradoxes or facts, these meaningful messages created and disseminated/circulated online are a part of the participatory culture; they function as collective creations, collectively consumed. Chuck Norris, the actor, and Fuego, the singer, were stripped of their real-person reality and codified only for some of the perceived features of their fictional character or their on stage persona. The result is an online cult, a form of validating the features selected as important for the members of the participatory culture. While Chuck Norris is more of a hero of an online cult created in a process of emphasizing on his heroic actions in the action movies hes starred -, Fuego is more like the hero of an online anti-cult. As the facts and messages created around these heroes are engulfing social, historical, economic, media-circulated themes, the legends are validating our common history, piece by piece and event by event. The process by which the two are transformed in heroes of cult or anti-cult is especially productive, yet different. Chuck Norris, the bad guy, judging from his record of violence in movies, is turned as a good, heroic figure, saving the day; Fuego, the good, unproblematic singer, is turned bad for its lack of depth. These contrary processes are at first random in what concerns the choice of characters (instead of Chuck Norris we might have had Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwartzenegger or Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and the like 68) and secondly, semantically complex (as they are contrived out of a mixture of themes, subjects, figures of speech). Circulated, at first, as fictional character, Chuck Norris has been taken over and resignified, during the January February 2012 street protests in Romania, as the hero to save or help protesters. This second circuit is bringing Chuck Norris back to life again, as a mono-dimensional character someone who can deal with difficult situations and solve them. Thus, some other features, exploited heavily in his online cult, were let aside (such as his appearance, beard, body hair which made for a big part of the facts discussed in our paper). On the other hand, Fuegos online anti-cult is validating social ideas and invalidating other persons, associated with him via those online constructions. His image is not enhanced, during the process; hes not deified, but diminished, based on his positioning among his audiences, rather than for individual reasons. Both actors of the cults discussed here are male; yet, one of them is constructed on action, on what he may or he may not do, while the other, on being: what Fuego is not, what he may want to be like or appear to be. Both cults recycle ideas, events, persons and places, in various degrees. Both these constructions define a new kind of social imaginary, where facts and media-induced threads, issues, themes or subjects are one and become some perpetual fodder for our minds thirsting for meaning.
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Our intuition is that all those mentioned above have had strong reasons not to become legends of this kind. Schwartzie entered politics, Bruce Willis changed characters and roles played, Bruce Lee died, not allowing for the quantity of mockery this legend or cult creating process might have called for, and so on.

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Bibliography Beciu, Camelia. (2011). Sociologia comunicrii i a spaiului public. Iai: Polirom. Bell, David. (2001) An Introduction to Cybercultures, 2001, Routledge, London Bell, R. A., & Daly, J. A. (1984). The affinity-seeking function of communication in Communication monographs, 51, 91-115. Boutaud, Jean-Jacques. (2004). Comunicare, semiotic i semne publicitare. Teorii, modele i aplicaii. Bucureti: Tritonic. Cathelat, Bernard. (2005). Publicitate i societate, Bucureti: Ed. Trei. Coman, Mihai. (2008) Introducere n antropologia cultural. Mitul i ritul, Iai: Polirom. Coman, Mihai. (2003) Mass media, mit i ritual. O perspectiv antropologic. Iai: Polirom. Dinescu, Lucia Simona. (2007). Corpul n imaginarul virtual. Iai: Polirom. Finkielkraut, Alain (1997). Umanitatea pierdut. Eseu asupra secolului XX. Bucureti: Ed. Vremea. Goleman, Daniel. (2007). Inteligena social. Noua tiin a relaiilor umane. Bucureti: Ed. Curtea Veche. Hansen, Mark B.N. (2003) Affect as medium, or the digital-facial-image, in Journal of Visual Culture no. 2, pp. 205-230 Kaplan, Andreas, Haenlein, Michael (2010) "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media", in Business Horizons 53(1): 5968 Mandoki, Katya. (2007). Everyday Esthetics. Prosaics, the Play of Culture and Social Identities, Burlington: Ashgate. McQuire, Scott, Radywyl, Natalia. (2010), From Object to Platform : Art, digital technology and time, in Time& Society, no.19, pp. 5-27. Miege, Bernanrd. (2000). Societatea cucerit de comunicare. Iai: Polirom. Porter, David, ed. (1997). Internet Culture.New York: Routledge. Rovena-Frumuani, Daniela. (2005) Analiza discursului. Ipoteze i ipostaze. Bucureti: Tritonic.
i

In this context it is worth noting that one of the first films that portrayed a school shooting, Lindsay Andersons If. (1968), has never inspired any copycat killing. I believe this is because, in spite of the detailed planning of the armed revolt by the three boarding school protagonists in If., and the subsequent ambush and shooting of students, teachers, and representatives of the establishment in the courtyard of the school, the act is so political and so imbued with the ideology of the youth at that time, that it could not inspire an individual or a gang of copycats with criminal intent as it could, for example for Basketball Diaries or Natural Born Killers. ii This style of painting was subsequently called trompe loeil, literally meaning to deceive or to fool the eye and flourished for a while in both the Baroque period, especially in mural paintings, and in the 20th Century photorealism. iii I can add from my personal experience that when I started watching this film, after it had started, without knowing anything about it, and having turned the TV on during a scene where a journalist is reporting from the deck of an aircraft carrier about movements of the Soviet army in the Persian Gulf, I was for a long moment convinced that WWIII had started. iv Clinton on Bauer. http://www.humanrightsfirst.org; Justice Scalia defends Bauer. The Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2007; Hollywood gets it wrong on torture and interrogation. Th e Jack Bauer Story http://wwwprimetimetorture.org v Read more:http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/01/19/mark-wahlberg-insults-11-families-who-ismost-insensitive-celebrity

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August, 1914 The Times of London, disseminated by the Bureau de la Presse and published in September 1915 La Rive Gauche.

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