School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemCrisis of infinite intertexts!: Continuity as adaptation in the Superman multimedia franchise( 2015)Since first appearing as a comic book character over three quarters of a century ago, Superman was not only the first superhero, spawning an entire genre of imitators, but also quickly became one of the most widely disseminated multi-media entertainment franchises. This achieved a degree of intergenerational cultural dissemination that far surpasses his comic book fandom. Yet despite an unprecedented degree of adaptation into other media from radio, newspaper strips, film serials, animation, feature films, video games and television, Superman’s ongoing comic books have remained in unbroken publication, developing a long and complex history of narrative renewal and reinvention. This thesis investigates the multifaceted intertextuality between the comic book portrayals of Superman and its many adaptations over the years, including how such retellings in other media have a generally stronger cultural impact, which exerts in turn an adaptive influence upon these continuing comics’ internalised narrative continuity. I shall argue that Superman comics, as a case study for the wider phenomenon in the superhero genre, demonstrate via their frequent revisions and relaunches of continuity, a process of deeply palimpsestuous self-adaptation. The Introduction positions my research methodology in relation to intertextual theory, with an emphasis on providing terminological clarity, while Chapter 1 expands into a literature review on pertinent key scholarship on adaptation studies and the comics studies field specifically. Chapter 2 explores the history and application of adaptation to other media in the Superman franchise, and how this has progressively manifested in ‘feedback’ processes in the comics that are the notional source material, an increasingly problematised textual designation. Chapter 3 refocuses on Superman’s comic book diegesis and unpacks the definitions and internal methodology of continuity and its revision, with a particular focus on the pertinent writings of Umberto Eco regarding the “oneiric” nature of Superman comics’ temporal narratology, and I weigh in on debates involving his later critics. Finally, Chapter 4 delves into the history and theoretical implications of comics’ process of perpetual and accelerating cycles of continuity revision, and their increasingly intertextual lines of influence with past and concurrent adaptations to other media within the wider franchise. Using Gerard Genette’s conception of the textual palimpsest, I argue that comic book continuity has become a highly iterative succession of self-adapting rearticulations of their core narratives, utilising much the same intertextual processes as adaptations between different media expressions, in search of a constant generational renewal and creative renegotiation.
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ItemWe have voices, too: literacy, alternative modernities, and Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong( 2015)Migrant domestic workers are arguably one of the most exploited and subordinated groups of women in the international division of labour under global capitalism. However, they are active in negotiating the prevailing power structures in the transnational labour market. My thesis examines the significance of literacy practices to the cultural and subjective experience of Indonesian Domestic Workers (IDWs) in Hong Kong. Using three sites of culture as case studies—the Forum Lingkar Pena Hong Kong (Pen Circle Forum, FLP-HK) writing community, IDWs’ blogging community, and the practice of suitcase libraries—I argue that IDWs actively exercise agency by engaging in literacy practices, which embody various forms of self-modernisation. Through extensive ethnography and textual analysis of IDWs’ writings, the study reveals that IDWs in the FLP-HK writing community define their own meaning of Islamic modernity by writing to maintain and develop self-reflexive and spiritual interiority. Meanwhile, IDW bloggers are engaged in digital literacy practices that consciously challenge the stereotypes of stupid and uneducated maids and create new images of smart and technologically literate women. Furthermore, their engagement in ICTs—a key element of modernity—for social and political activism enables their elaboration of and participation in an alternative public sphere. Finally, IDWs’ suitcase library practices aimed at fostering reading practices carry the literacy mission as another element of modernity. More importantly, suitcase libraries serve as literacy hubs in which the various forms of IDWs’ literacy practices converge, and thus facilitate IDWs’ participation in an alternative public sphere, in which IDWs create forums of literacy-related public discussions. The above three sites of culture and the elements of modernity they negotiate are the manifestations of IDWs’ definitions of their own meanings of modernity.
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ItemAustralian Aboriginal art in the United States of America, 1941-1966( 2014)The United States has been collecting and exhibiting Australian Aboriginal art since the Great American Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842. Collections from Port Jackson gathered during this expedition were displayed in the Washington DC Patent Office until 1851. Such early collecting and display is rarely noted or discussed in the literature on the history of Australian Aboriginal art and its exhibition. This dissertation seeks to redress this oversight through the story of Australian Aboriginal art in the United States as told by case studies. The primary topic of this dissertation is exhibitions; however, other events that raised American awareness of this topic will also be evaluated. This is a piece of historical research informed by interdisciplinary scholarship on Aboriginal art. In writing about the representation of Aboriginal culture, I propose that it is not sufficient to identify what and where exhibitions occurred, the historic backdrop, politics, and people involved, also require consideration. Through a close reading of archival material, the chapter structure reflects four narrative themes emergent from analysis of exhibitions and events as case studies. These themes are: Aboriginal art as historic Australian art, as cultural, Stone Age, and fine art. The following research questions guide this study: what were the major representations of Australian Aboriginal art and culture in the United States? What informed the narratives of these events? Lastly, what parties were involved in the organisation of these cross-cultural displays and what impact did this have? This thesis argues that investigation into the geographic reception of Australian Aboriginal art in America provides evidence of its shifting conception and value. This has significant impact given recent statements that it was the American reception of Aboriginal Art that facilitated its acceptance as high art in Australia. Case studies include: Art of Australia, 1788-1941 (1941), a touring exhibition that began at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, funded by the Carnegie Corporation and guest curated by Theodore Sizer; and Arts of the South Seas (1946), organised by Rene d’Harnoncourt that showed at the Museum of Modern Art. Also considered are the promotional efforts of anthropologist Charles Pearcy Mountford and his cross-country “Australia’s Stone Age Men” lecture tour that eventuated in the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land (1948). In 1966 three separate exhibitions showed in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Kansas. Edward Lehman Ruhe who was a major but largely unknown Aboriginal art aficionado is discussed for his pioneering efforts exhibiting Aboriginal art from his private collection from 1966-1977. The findings of this thesis suggest that Americans conceived and represented Aboriginal material as a form of art in the 1940s and 1950s, before Australia. Case study analysis also evidences that the exhibition of Aboriginal art was used for cultural diplomacy between Australian and the United States in the years surrounding World War II. Finally, certain individuals were particularly influential in realising exhibitions of Aboriginal art, and their legacies laid the foundation for displays today.
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ItemWild articulations: the Wild Rivers Act 2005 (Qld), conservation, development and sustainable futures in remote Australia( 2014)This thesis examines issues of development, Indigeneity and environmental conservation byconsidering how the controversial Wild Rivers Act 2005 (Qld) was debated, reported on,celebrated and condemned in Cape York Peninsula, northern Australia between 2004 and 2012.The Peninsula has long been constructed as a ‘wild’ space, whether as terra nullius, a zoneexcepted from settler law or a biodiverse wilderness region in need of conservation. The past twodecades, however, have seen two major changes in the political and social composition of theregion, the first being the legal recognition of geographically extensive Indigenous land rights andthe creation of a corporate infrastructure to govern them. Second, the Peninsula has been thecentre of national debates regarding the market integration and social normalisation ofIndigenous people and the site of substantial investment in Indigenous policy reform. Ironically,the Queensland state government’s own attempts to ‘settle’ land use through the Wild Rivers Act2005 (Qld) brought out the immanent tensions within the region’s present political formation.This thesis adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine how and why the controversy overthe legislation occurred and what it indicates about present imaginaries of the governance andpotentiality of Indigenous lands and waters in northern Australia. The thesis shows thathistorically embedded forms of ‘wildness’ continue to shape debates about Cape York Peninsula’sfuture, debates in which economic and social development are often conflated and conceptualisedas beneficent transformations. Ultimately, the thesis contends that close consideration of thisevent provides insights into the future dilemmas of development, conservation and Indigenouspolitics in remote Australia.
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ItemPicture perfect: Hollywood’s ideal communities and the perils of dream-building( 2013)This study explores the interaction between the depiction of idealised communities in post-World War II filmmaking, and the efforts of urban planners and property developers to actually construct such idealised communities. It examines the ideals of community as depicted in small-town films of the 1940s and suburban sitcoms of the 1950s and explores how these imagined places were an inspiration for post-war suburban development. However, these ideals were also a source of discontent as people grappled with the realities of dispersed, centreless, car-oriented suburbs and found them wanting compared to imagined communities, and the study examines the way in which such anti-suburban sentiment was expressed in popular culture. It examines attempts to respond to this discontent through the creation of new built environments that better reflect media ideals. The attempts by Walt Disney to create such places, first at Disneyland and then in planned communities, are explored. The study then examines the way in which urban planners responded to these influences at the planned communities of Seaside and Celebration. Finally, the study examines the way in which anxiety about the impossibility of imposing a film-like perception of the urban environment has been reflected in films such as The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998) and Pleasantville (Gary Ross, 1998). I argue that the way urban planners have approached the development of cities and towns has been shaped by cultural depictions of the such places, and is frequently “sold” by resorting to cultural ideals, but that the blurring of boundaries between real and imagined places has also spurred a great deal of criticism of urban planners’ approaches.
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ItemEvolving multilingualisms in poetry: third culture as a window on multilingual poetic praxis( 2011)In this thesis, I compare the understanding and construction of multilingualism across linguistics, cultural studies and literature in an effort to interrogate the popular notion that multilingual individuals – and creative writers in particular – are conflicted and fragmented as a result of their multilingualism. I locate the source of that assumption in the monolingual bias that arose when Western European thinkers adopted the idea that nations should be built around and defined by language. I then trace its development and influence on attitudes towards multilingualism and multilingual expression across disciplines to the present day. In particular, I examine the work of contemporaneous multilingual writers and assess how their work is both shaped by and resists these developing popular and academic conceptions of multilingualism. I identify three distinct types of multilingual writers in the process, who I refer to as traditional multilingual poets, cross culture polyglot poets and third culture polyglot poets. The first write in only one language at a time and do not mix codes, the second combine two languages usually connected through a history of colonialism, switching between them in the body of a single poem, and the third weave three or more languages that may or may not have any colonial history into poetry that is meant to be performed rather than read. I argue that polyglot poetry, particularly third culture poetry, as it is marked by a lack of conflict between the languages, represents a challenge to the dominant monolingual perception of multilingualism. Polyglot poetry reframes the idea of the fractured multilingual as a multifaceted one, with each identity and language representing not a shattered fragment but a new dimension. Creating polyglot poetry, then, is a political act in that it takes a dominant, sometimes colonizing, language, claims ownership of it, and then infuses it with the music of the Other. Rather than see their multifaceted identities as a hindrance to national belonging, I argue that polyglot poets represent a large number of people around the world – multilinguals all – whose identities exist harmoniously across multiple languages and national affiliations. This thesis puts forward a new framework for studying the movement of multilinguals between their languages, and specifically provides a new language for studying highly activated multilinguals.
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ItemBrutal Belonging: affective intensities in, and between, Australia's and Japan's grindcore scenes( 2012)This thesis examines the experience of affective belonging in the grindcore music scene. Presenting an ethnography of how scene-members in Australia and Japan participate in grindcore, my thesis shows the experience of affective belonging in three ways: spatially, socially and through the transnational exchanges between both scenes. My thesis formulates the concept of ‘brutal belonging’ as a metaphor for the intense, sometimes violent, sensation(s) of affective belonging in grindcore, to argue that fans experience belonging via shared affective intensities rather than scenic signifiers. My thesis focuses on how grindcore metal music scene-members in Australia and Japan experience belonging affectively.
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ItemFriendology: the negotiation of intimacy on Facebook( 2012)How does Facebook influence intimacy as it relates to identity and relationships? I answer aspects of this question through a grounded ethnography of Australian Facebook users. Research into social network services has produced a range of disparate concepts, in part due to highly specific quantitative investigations. Though some ethnography has been produced, there remains a need for finegrained, qualitative research. This thesis responds to these issues, combining ethnographic methods with Grounded Theory techniques in order to produce a conceptually rich account of everyday social processes. Six participants were recruited, interviewed multiple times, observed on Facebook, and had their Facebook profile information downloaded. A Grounded Theory was inductively developed in which intimacy, identity and friendship emerged as core concepts. The benefits of this approach are a focus on process and the clarification of ideas through abstraction and conceptualisation, rather than thick description. Facebook influences identity and friendship, I argue, by making intimacy problematic. Interpersonal intimacy is a primary quality which defines friendships, and my participants self‐reflexively perform intimacy on Facebook in order to reproduce their friendships. I conceptualise this endeavour in terms of spatiality and social capital. However, participants encounter a host of sociotechnical contingencies which jeopardise this process. These can negatively affect interpersonal intimacy in a variety of ways. In response, participants develop reflexive techniques to ‘negotiate intimacy’. I give a detailed constructionist account of these, focusing on how participants control spaces, mobilise resources of identification, and develop self‐protecting forms of public, social intimacy. These processes respond to broad problems and describe nascent norms, rather than individual tactics. Hence, I believe they are indicative of a ‘culture of reflexive intimacy’. This is a ‘friend culture’ stemming from changes in the nature of modern relationships which are institutionalised on Facebook. Hence, Facebook is a ‘friendology’, a friendship technology, but also a realm in which the logos of friendship becomes an object of reflexive thought and action. Although the apogee of this thesis cannot capture this culture’s broad structures, I explore how they may emerge through symbolic interactions in a novel socio‐technical environment in respect to a particular cultural group.
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ItemAfter language: Alain Badiou and the linguistic turn( 2011)This thesis aims to explore whether and how theorists in the humanities today can talk about truth and universality after the critical and linguistic turns in philosophy. To approach this problem it examines the work of Alain Badiou, who explicitly seeks a theory of truth which is contemporary with these developments. Whether we are talking about analytic or continental philosophy, language came to dominate philosophical enquiry in the past century. In making the heretofore overlooked or obfuscated link between language and thought apparent, this put into question the nature and limits of reason, the autonomy of the knowing subject, and the representational or realist conception of truth. Moreover, it left in doubt the viability of philosophy itself (outside the perennial or self-effacing investigation of language) insofar as it seemed to rest on the solidity of these very tenets. For Badiou, the outcome of this trajectory is a pervasive sense of the finitude and limits of reason, and of the end or completion of philosophy. He seeks to reverse this by interrupting the linguistic turn with his own turn to mathematics. In particular, Badiou is able to discern in mathematics a mode of thought subtracted from its linguistic or finite determination, and able to grasp the real in a way unaccounted for by critical or linguistic philosophy. On this basis (the separation of thought from language or finitude as evidenced in mathematics) Badiou develops a theory of truth as infinite and eternal, whilst nonetheless realised in and through language. In this way, Badiou’s thought aims to account for the linguistic turn, and for critical philosophy more generally, whilst nonetheless subverting them internally. This leaves us with a compelling and original notion of truth, and of the role of truths in historical change, and in addition resituates philosophy as not so much the discoverer of truths, but their standard-bearer and compiler.