tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35136747847653026802024-03-21T01:51:56.591-07:00Cardiff sciSCREENCardiff sciSCREEN is a cross-disciplinary programme that promotes the engagement of publics with science and the academy. Using showings of films, sciSCREEN uses local academic expertise to discuss contemporary developments in science in an understandable and entertaining way, facilitating debate on the wider social and cultural implications of these advances. These discussions draw on a range of disciplinary perspectives and the broad repertoire of themes found within contemporary cinema.AndyBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14119289618783573234noreply@blogger.comBlogger160125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-11392719089543119592014-07-02T05:24:00.003-07:002014-07-02T05:24:54.264-07:00“Iris” a film by Richard Eyre based on the book Iris. A Memoir of Iris Murdoch (1998) by John Bayley.<br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The following is an essay written by Professor <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/I-L/professor-joanna-latimer-overview.html" target="_blank">Joanna Latimer</a> and relates to the Cardiff sciSCREEN event after the screening of the film Iris.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I was very interested to see this film for
two reasons. First, because it was about
a powerful woman, Iris Murdoch, who has been an important figure in my own
life, one of my heroes. Not only did she
succeed as a philosopher at Oxford, a pre-eminently man’s world, she also wrote
some extraordinary novels about the class and kind of people that I grew up
amongst in 1950/60s London: cosmopolitan intellectuals, the thinking (upper
middle) classes, ‘bo-bo’ (bohemian bourgeois) and blue stocking. Her complex, carefully observed stories
uncover how such people can be incarcerated by their egos as well as the sacred
cows of the British, middle class society that some of them, at least, are
attempting to be free of. She shows us
just how hard goodness is, the difficulties that a specific time and place in
history make for being not just true to self, but also to a sense of a greater
good. Whilst Iris Murdoch is associated
with the libratory movement of the ‘60s, she is very cautious of how a
revolution in attitudes and mores can be attained <i>to the good</i>, and she preserves a sense of the importance of duty,
and a particular kind of moral freedom, which is not centered on the self but
on relations. Most of all, then, Iris
Murdoch was for me brave – not just because she represented the special
relation between language and the mind, a relation that enables truth and
freedom, but because she was so direct and true in her pursuit of goodness: at
a time when all around were advocating a bonfire of institutions she was
thinking through their worth, and how we need institutions, such as duty, to be
able to be good even when we are at a loss, incarcerated by our own false gods,
such as the need to keep up appearances.
I loved her wit but also the grace that comes from a passion for finding
truth, rather than mere correctness<a href="file:///C:/Users/ssojtl/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/N6MYCL3Z/Iris.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>,
a grace that shone from her eyes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Secondly, I wanted to see <i>Iris</i>, because I have an academic
interest in dementia. I am interested in
understanding the affects and effects dementia has. Here rather than just thinking of dementia in
terms of a diseased brain, I see dementia in terms of how it disorders
identities and relations. In particular
how it disorders the complex social processes that produce the appearance at
least of cooperation, what sociologists such as Erving Goffman and Harold
Garfinkel observe as a person’s capacity to fit in, get along and ‘do’ member. Thus I am also interested in offering a
complementary discourse to the medical and policy discourse of waging a war on
dementia. I want to help find a way of
understanding dementia and explore how dementia, in its many different forms,
is disordering of more than cognition.
Dementia disorders forms of social organization, and challenges deeply held
cultural preoccupations with particular forms of identity, especially the
relation between personhood and the capacity to be social - fit in, conform,
know how to get along. Dementia makes <i>difference</i> visible. So I am interested in finding ways to ‘dwell’
with dementia’s forms of difference.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The film represented what it is like to
live with dementia, but not from inside dementia, from outside it. By
giving us the perspective of the person who ended up as the ‘carer’ – John
Bayley - it was a poignant portrayal of what it is like for others who are
close, even dependent, to live alongside and attempt to cope with the degeneration,
and seeming loss, of their loved one.
And I think on this score the film will have spoken to many who have
been in similar predicaments. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Through the use of flashback, we are also able
to see how the marriage between John Bayley and Iris Murdoch was rooted in Iris’
strength. We are shown just how
dependent John Bayley is on Iris – she animates his life, from the very
beginning: she, in Johnny Cash’s words, ‘carries’ him. He is portrayed as a repressed, stuttering,
absent-minded and very sweet young man, one who is good at making him self a
figure of fun. And we see how he is
carried along, sometimes in ways he cannot understand, or even at moments
participate in (I am thinking here of the scene where he watches Iris with
another man through the crack in the door, or when he is standing below her
window and sees here embracing and kissing a woman). Not only is their relationship portrayed as
highly intellectual and eccentric, but also as contributing to an experimental
and liberating force in British history. The flashbacks to scenes of them
riding their bikes at speed, of swimming naked in the river, and of Iris'
commitment to the politics of sexual freedom, all help convey the entanglement
of their relationship in the liberating politics of post war England that
challenged what had gone before. Crucially,
we are shown how Iris leads here, pulling John along with her: he is always
behind, riding in her slipstream. We also learn that it is Iris who is central
to the, albeit rather minimal, order in their lives. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We see how the dementia gradually excludes
Iris, and therefore John, from the intimacy of a life lived in the relationship
between the mind, language and a particular kind of freedom. Here, the metaphor
that underpins the film is one of being gradually excluded from the clear light
that comes from the relation of language and mind, the relation at the heart of
Iris’ world. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The film shows how Bayley and Murdoch begin
by trying to give dementia room. On the
one hand as leading academics and intellectuals they attempt to contribute to
knowledge and understanding, and participate in the clinical work of studying
dementia, including the new technologies that enable the representation of the
diseased brain. On the other, portrayed
as deeply eccentric, they seem perfectly suited to adapting to dementia's
disordering power. But because it is words, not as mere referents, but as
metonymic for worlds of ideas, the stuff of Iris' life, that are most affected,
they find that as the disease progresses, any room for them, for a free life
inside language and thought, becomes obliterated. We see dementia's disordering
power here vividly represented not just by Iris’ retreat from writing, her
writer’s block, or her blankness and anxiety, but by the increasing disorganization
of the household: as her mind deteriorates their is literally less and less
space for thinking and living as the clutter and the filth gradually take over.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As the scanning machines and the doctors
abandon all hope, predicting that the lights are going out, Bayley tries to
find his (and the world’s) Iris again, convinced that she is there
somewhere. He encourages her with paper
and pen, and tries to get her to retrieve her former self by writing, and
discoursing. But we see scenes in which a very different person is
becoming present – one who watches Teletubbies, and pees on the carpet, one who
repeats things and makes no sense any more, one who escapes and gets lost, on
the streets of Oxford, and found, in a supermarket by an old flame. She is not just in a state of disorder but is
disordering, and as Derrida put it, ‘elsewhere’. She is no longer competent in her and John’s
former world, and Bayley becomes less and less competent in hers – to the point
of exasperation and abusiveness: ‘I hate every bit of you’ he screams at her in
bed. She turns over to him and utters
the truth, with her old directness, ‘I love you.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The scene at the seaside for me is a
profound one. After the greetings, in
which Iris does not seem to make any sense of who anyone is, we see her running
down the shingle to the sea, childlike, clutching her rather tatty notebook in
her hand. We then see Iris sitting on
the shingle, tearing pages from her reporter’s pad, laying them out carefully
in rows, and placing her beloved stones on them, beautifully, and in perfect
symmetry. She is creating a new kind of
writing, a new kind of ordering, perhaps even a new kind of book. But what happens next reveals the profound
distance between her reality and that of the world she once helped create. At
this critical moment on the beach, the old order intrudes with Janet and John,
who walk down to her and ask her to sign her ‘real’ book, her last novel,
holding out the page of the book to be signed together with a biro pen. Iris can't (or wont?) do it, she refuses, she
is like someone for whom the world that the book, and the signing of it, no
longer mean anything. Janet and John
don’t see the sense in her new pebble book, and Iris destroys it, freeing the
blank pages from the weight of the rounded stones, so that they are caught by
the wind and taken out towards the sea. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Eventually, then, dementia becomes an
adversary for John, one that obliterates the Iris he once had, and it seems not
to give their old ways of being together any room. But nor does that old
world, those old forms of ordering, have room for the new Iris. And we see her taken to a home, reasonably
happily, a space that seems to have room for her. We see Iris dancing and singing alone, along
a corridor, with huge windows down one side, filled with billowing, translucent
curtains. The corridor and Iris seem
light and mysterious and calm, yet quietly joyous. In the home, then, she seems to have regained
the light, before she dies there, as John says, peacefully.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Finding ways to make room for dementia, and
the reality and personhood of the one with dementia is hard, because it
disorders the very foundations of our living together in the world: it can
undermine a person’s capacity to be social, conform (more or less!), negotiate,
or even resist, but intelligently, accountably, with reason. Perhaps we can think then how dwelling with
dementia is about seeing the sense in the reality and world of the person with
dementia, becoming more competent in that world and letting the person who they
once were, ‘go’, at the same time as letting the person they are becoming dwell
with us, cherishing their difference.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/ssojtl/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/N6MYCL3Z/Iris.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> I am alluding to one of Martin Heidegger’s distinctions here. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-78859894002619315682014-06-10T02:16:00.004-07:002014-06-10T02:16:45.420-07:00Lars and the Real Girl: Mental Health, Communities and StigmaThe following essay is written by <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/M-P/dr-martin-oneill-overview.html" target="_blank">Dr. Martin O Neill</a> from the Cardiff School of Social Sciences and relates to a showing of Lars and the Real Girl at last month's sciSCREEN.<br />
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I was recently asked to give a talk on mental health and community as part of the Cardiff <a href="http://bit.ly/1tEqrY8" target="_blank">sciSCREEN initiative</a>. following a showing of the film “Lars and the Real Girl”. This is a charming little film which recounts the tale of a social misfit in small town North American town who appears to compensate for his loneliness and social ineptitude by forming the delusion that he is in a “Girlfriend Experience” with a life like sex doll, which he names Bianca. As a story and as a modern morality tale this is a film that will take you through the whole gamut of emotions, and purely for its entertainment value I would thoroughly recommend you give it a watch.</div>
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I had been asked to give this talk after the screening in light of the fact that I have quite a long history of working in poor communities in the South Wales valleys that suffer severe health issues both of the physical and psychological nature. I started the talk by recounting a recent conversation I had had with a physician who had worked with the late great <a href="http://bit.ly/1pNatKJ" target="_blank">Archie Cochrane</a>. One of Archie’s most famous pieces of work consisted of a study of the <a href="http://bit.ly/1jNkDG7" target="_blank">Rhondda Fach</a> conducted in the 1950s. During this conversation the physician recounted how, at that time, the main health problems communities faced concerned pneumoconiosis, TB and other respiratory diseases related to the mining industry and smoking. “Of course” he said “I am sure if we were doing the study today we would find mental health issues would be the main problem”. I had to agree whole heartedly. The experience gained from working in the area for over 10 years has meant I know only too well that following the demise of the heavy industries, that had once been not only the <i>raison d’etre</i> of these communities but also the cause of the respiratory illnesses that blighted them, has left an emptiness and anomie where mental health issues have impacted on the lives of many.</div>
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Although in many ways this film is certainly a feel good one, the way that Lars’ family respond to his delusion is typical of the way many families react when one of their relatives is affected by mental health issues. Denial, blame, guilt, trying to talk “sense” to the individual, a sense of powerlessness are all common responses to something that understandably people find very distressing when it impacts on a loved one. Often the treatment or care that is available in such areas, particularly for people suffering quite low level psychological problems such as mild depression, is poor and may even appear to exacerbate the situation. The high levels of <a href="http://dailym.ai/1o0ontG" target="_blank">medication prescribed in the community</a> does little to address the underlying problems and provides no real solution and can be seen as contributing to developing a population dependent on such “happy pills”. </div>
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Mental health, unlike many other health conditions is often associated with stigma. If you recount to friends you are unable to attend a function or go to work because you have a migraine it does not have anywhere near the same connotations as if you say it is because you have depression for which you are receiving treatment. One of the central features of the plot of Lars and the Real Girl is how the community react to and, ultimately, accept Lars and his delusion. Here I think is a very useful message in relation to how we view mental illness and its treatment. Early on when Lars’ family take him to the local doctor to be “cured” of his delusion, the doctor asks the family “Is he functional, can he wash himself, dress himself and get himself to work?” To which the family reply that he can. “Well then” the doctor replies “let’s just go with it”. As the doctor also points out Lars is not in any distress nor is he a danger to himself or others. As was explored in the discussion that followed the screening this would probably not be considered acceptable practice by a healthcare professional under the current models of treatment.</div>
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Mental health issues are a reality for many people and many communities. A statistic often quoted in the media is that one in three of us will experience some sort of mental health issue in our lifetime. Although the veracity of that statistic is somewhat questionable there is no doubt that mental health is a very real concern for many individuals and society in general. How should society and community deal with such an issue? Should we stigmatise it, pathologise it and medicate it as we currently appear to do with little affect? Mental illness can and does lead to great distress and pain, not just for those who experience it but also for their families and the wider community, and at times like that people certainly do need help. It is also probably true however we all, in one way or another, delude ourselves at times to make life more tolerable. It could be, as we see in the conclusion to the film, that accepting a certain amount of oddness or delusion, particularly if it is harming no one, is no bad thing for both the individual and the wider community. </div>
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Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-81677788322255924922014-06-09T07:17:00.003-07:002014-06-09T07:18:56.180-07:00Iris (cert. 15) Tuesday June 24th at the Hadyn Ellis Building<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Iris (cert. 15) from 6pm on Tuesday June 24th at the Hadyn Ellis Building</b></div>
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Iris, based on the life of British writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch, is a story of unlikely yet enduring love. As a young academic, Murdoch meets and eventually falls in love with fellow professor John Bayley, a man whose awkwardness seems in stark opposition to the self-confidence of his future wife. The story unfolds through Bayley's eyes.<br />
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He recalls their first encounter over 40 years earlier. These images portray Murdoch as a vibrant young woman with great intellect and are contrasted with the novelist's later life, after the effects of Alzheimer's Disease have ravaged her. Murdoch's great mind deteriorates until she is reduced to a mere vestige of her former self, unable to perform simple tasks and completely reliant on her husband.<br />
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Join us for a <b>FREE</b> screening of the film Iris, followed by a <b>FREE</b> panel discussion centering on themes brought up in the film including dementia, social care, medical ethics and ageing. </div>
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Confirmed speakers include<b> Profs Kim Graham, John Gallacher, Joanna Latimer</b> and <b>Andrew Edgar</b>. </div>
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Free food and drinks will be provided and everyone attending is welcome to take part in the debate.</div>
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<b>Date: </b>Tuesday June 24th.</div>
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<b>Time: </b>6pm start (please arrive 10-15 beforehand)</div>
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<b>Venue: </b>Hadyn Ellis Building, Maindy Road, Cardiff University.</div>
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<b>Book at</b>: <a href="http://www.cardiffsciscreen.co.uk/film/iris" target="_blank">Iris</a></div>
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Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-21067153487452620332014-06-09T07:01:00.003-07:002014-06-09T07:01:37.915-07:00Lingering on Pink and the Suspension of Disbelief<div style="text-align: justify;">
The following essay is written by the Artist - <a href="http://purpleberetcreations.co.uk/" target="_blank">Julia Thomas</a> - and relates to the Cardiff sciSCREEN discussing the film Lars and the Real Girl.</div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I'm going to draw on some significant
visual aspects within the film <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805564/" target="_blank">Lars andthe Real Girl</a></i> and also relate the film to an art project and gallery space
that I've been running in Roath, Cardiff. <a href="http://atticblogsite.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">ATTIC</a> involved art residencies,
exhibitions, discussions and events exploring how we understand the mind
personally, culturally and scientifically. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">‘Lars and the Real Girl’ is a film about
loss, attachment and abandonment, loneliness, compassion, acceptance and
connecting but principally it’s about community and a collective compassion by
that community towards an individual. Our understanding and experience of life
comes about through our own personal encounters with the world but also with how
we communicate with others and how we share those encounters with others
through language, both verbal and visual. When I use the word language, I mean words,
sounds, marks or signs that hold meaning. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Although there are other examples in the
film, I’m going to draw on a particular visual reference - the colour pink, which
I found interesting both in its use as a signifier and as a means of
composition to guide us through the narrative of what Lars is experiencing. Early
on in the film Lars’ lack of a girlfriend is highlighted by his church friend
Mrs. Gruner when she gives him a pink carnation and tells him to give it to
someone nice. However, when Margo awkwardly
steps forward as someone who could potentially fulfill that role, there is that
very comical moment as Lars hurriedly throws the carnation to the floor and
runs away as fast as he can. This instantly sets up the framework of the film
to be about connecting (or not) with others and within the backdrop of
community life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Most likely triggered by Karin’s impending
childbirth, Lars’ delusion of Bianca develops with humour and sensitivity
throughout the film; he treats her as a real person with whom he can share his
anxieties and use as a tool to enable him to confidently share his concerns
with others. The pink bedroom features heavily and this, of course, was his
mother’s bedroom who died whilst giving birth to Lars. Thus the pink comes to
represent his mother’s lingering presence in the family home but also her
absence in Lars’ life. Many of the conversations between Lars and Bianca, the
anatomically correct sex doll that becomes his girlfriend, take place within
this pink bedroom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> </span>When Lars’ relationship with Bianca begins
to falter he goes bowling with Margo and again we see the significance of the
colour pink when the filmmakers linger on a moment in which Lars is reluctant
to let go of the bowling ball, the <i>pink </i>bowling
ball. This can be read as the letting go of the disconnected life he has
constructed to protect himself or is simply familiar with, possibly as a result
of his upbringing by a father saddened and incapacitated by grief and loss. Finally,
towards the end of the film, Lars prominently wears a pink carnation in his
lapel at Bianca’s funeral.</div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Within artworks there is often less of an
obvious narrative than within films but the use of colour, media, composition,
signifiers and different modes of presentation or experiencing the work make up
a visual language that may confer intended meaning or, more interestingly, open
up the opportunity for the viewer to develop their own reading and meaning of
the work through what they bring of themselves and their own experiences.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">There are other aspects of the film I
picked up on, many of which are particularly relevant to the ethos and concept
of ATTIC and to the activities that have taken place there. The anatomically
correct sex-doll, although perfectly acceptable to Lars, is not initially
considered to be acceptable behaviour in the eyes of the community, especially
the church members or parents of young children. Contrast that with the act of
a socially acceptable form of greeting, the handshake. The handshake is
highlighted in the film by the difficulties Lars has with physical contact and
his obvious discomfort and pain of that process. <i>Mores </i>is a word used to define the accepted (moral) conventions of
a group or society so it is interesting how the film plays with those
perspectives and, indeed, plays with us as viewers of the film by presenting us
with a seemingly unrealistic scenario of a community that later accepts Bianca
as a ‘real girl’. Perhaps such ‘obvious’ unrealism simply echoes the schism
that exists between real life and fantasy within Lars’ delusion and allows us
to consider what we might achieve if we suspend our disbeliefs and conventions
and open up to another perspective?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">A comical moment in the film is when the
pregnant Karin wrestles Lars to the ground in her frustration at being unable
to connect with him and to cope with his increasingly evasive behavior. This
takes place in the space between the family home and the garage where Lars has
been displaced. Such negotiation of ‘the private and the public’ raises issues
of safe territory and of how difficult it can be for a person to deal with
other’s lack of understanding and distress.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Another trope in the film is ‘conversation
through the act of making’; the church ladies ‘sit’ with Lars whilst Bianca is
ill and they tackle the sensitive conversation of what her illness represents, all
whilst in the act of knitting or embroidery. A creative/visual framework,
conversation through creating/making, the bringing together of different
perspectives, questioning the accepted conventions of different groups in
society and the negotiation of the private and the public are all features of
ATTIC and what it has been exploring. There is soon to be a short documentary
film about the project but you can see some of the activity that took place by
searching on <a href="http://facebook.com/cardiffATTIC">facebook.com/cardiffATTIC</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-9287031406086079782014-05-08T07:46:00.003-07:002014-05-08T07:46:57.215-07:00Lars and the Real Girl - May 29thDear sciSCREENer,<br />
<br />
Please note that the Lars and the Real Girl sciSCREEN has been re-scheduled to <b>Thursday 29th May</b>.<br />
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<b>Date: </b>Thursday 29th May<br />
<b>Time: </b>6pm<br />
<b>Venue: </b>Hadyn Ellis Building, Maindy Road, Cardiff<br />
<b>Book at: </b><a href="http://events.cardiff.ac.uk/view/sciscreen-lars-and-the-real-girl/" target="_blank">Lars and the Real Girl</a><br />
<br />
Tickets are free but must be booked in advance<br />
<br />
This event is sponsored by the <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/research/neuroscience-mental-health" target="_blank">Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute</a> as part of a series of events exploring mental health and neuroscience issues.<br />
<br />
Please also note that our website - <i>www.cardiffsciscreen.co.uk</i> - is currently experiencing a few glitches. Apologies for any inconvenience.Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-87540635425618816472014-05-01T05:29:00.000-07:002014-07-18T06:04:18.200-07:00District 9: Prawns, Pests and Matter out of Place<div style="text-align: justify;">
The following is an essay written by <a href="http://sites.cardiff.ac.uk/cesagen/people/dr-jamie-lewis/" target="_blank">Jamie Lewis</a> and relates to the District 9 sciSCREEN. </div>
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<i>District 9</i> (2009) is a science fiction film that in many ways is less about an imagined future and is more a social commentary on the here and now. There is no doubt that the film is an allegory for racism, ethnicity, South African Apartheid and, perhaps more widely, xenophobia. To this end, <i>District 9</i> has some connections to the film <i>Planet of the Apes</i> (1968) which has also been described as an allegory for racism and arms-warfare (although this has been criticised in other quarters). Weapons, along with social and class politics, as well as other worlds are also central themes in Blomkamp’s most recent film <i>Elysium</i> (2013). In <i>Elysium</i>, humans have built and colonised an artificial ‘planet’ in space, which can be seen from Earth. In <i>District 9</i>, however, the aliens, colloquially known by the derogatory name ‘prawns’, have presumably come from space to Earth. It is this concept of the ‘alien’ in <i>District 9</i> that I discuss in this short essay. </div>
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First let us compare the alien in this film with another film around the same time – <i>Avatar</i> (2009). In both <i>District 9</i> (Wikus van der Merwe) and <i>Avatar</i> (Jake Sully) the central character in the film is a human who becomes an ‘alien’. It is, however, arguably easier to empathise with those blue, sentient creatures from <i>Avatar</i>, as they were beautiful, idealised, moral beings. <i>District 9</i> makes the audience worker harder to sympathise. The aliens are far from beautiful. In fact, they are meant to disgust, and for the most part, unlike <i>Avatar</i>, we don’t see them as morally superior. Indeed, in large parts of the film, they are presented as grotesque savages and scavengers. All the same, we do have to empathise with them as victims. Accordingly, <i>District 9</i> is much more politically powerful than <i>Avatar</i> – as what keeps us treating other people humanely isn’t tested by treating people that we admire with dignity (Na’vi), but treating people we don’t understand with the same level dignity (Prawns). Thus, despite the film’s central characters being from a faraway world, its central concept is about something very human – the film is a commentary on humanity and inhumanity. </div>
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The setting for <i>District 9</i> is Johannesburg, a place not only home to the prawns of <i>District 9</i> but also in real life the ‘parktown prawn’ – a six-legged, cold-blooded insect with feelers on top of its head and underneath its jaw. These creatures can grow up to 10 cm masticating their way through a diet of snails, slugs and vegetation. Indeed, the parktown prawn is the inspiration behind the look of the <i>District 9</i> prawn explaining their grotesque insect like features. Other resemblances between <i>District 9’s</i> prawn and the parktown prawn include the parktown prawn’s tendency to discharge a blob of noxious black sludge, and a penchant for cat and dog food as well as garden pests. <br />
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“Give them one hundred cans. – Hundred, One Hundred!”<br />
“Yes, yes, but we take them all now”.<br />
“Alright, boys! Get them the catfood – hurry up”<br />
<b>District 9 (2009)</b><br />
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Unfortunately for the residents of Johannesberg, the parktown prawn’s eating habits don’t end there. Parktown prawns also feed on floor boards, furniture and rugs. Thus, they may be a friend for the gardener but they are certainly a pest for the household dweller. Mary Douglas is important here if we are to unpack the symbolism behind the <i>District 9</i> prawn. Douglas was a British social anthropologist best known for her work on human culture, rituals and symbolism. The ‘home’ for Mary Douglas was less a particular space and more a place brought under control (Fudge, 2011). For the most part, parktown prawns become a ‘pest’ when they are out of place. In the garden, they can be conceived as a friend of the South African greenkeeper, ridding the garden of unwanted gastropoda. In the house they are deemed a pest; invading the home, munching their way through furnishings, damaging property and ultimately making the place untidy or ‘dirty’. </div>
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Douglas’ seminal work first published in <i>Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo</i> (1966) traces the word and meaning of ‘dirt’. Pollution or dirt, she argues is the consequence of ‘matter being out of place’. An example would be bodily fluids, important to the internal workings of one's body, but which on leaving the body become seen as filthy and dangerous. In a similar vein, the prawns of <i>District 9</i> are also out of place. The following extract is part of a conversation between Christopher Johnson – one of the alien ship’s officers – and his young son.</div>
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<i>Christopher Johnson's Son:</i> How many moons does our planet have?<br />
<i>Christopher Johnson:</i> Seven.<br />
<i>Christopher Johnson's Son:</i> This planet only has one. I can't wait to see our planet again... it's bigger than this one, isn't it?<br />
<i>Christopher Johnson:</i> [switches off holographic atlas of presumably the Alien home planet] Enough.<br />
<i>Christopher Johnson's Son</i>: We go home now?<br />
<i>Christopher Johnson:</i> Not home, no. This is where we must go.<br />
[shows his son an MNU brochure outlining "Sanctuary Park Alien Relocation Camp" aka District 10]<br />
<i>Christopher Johnson:</i> See that tent there? That might be ours.<br />
<i>Christopher Johnson's Son</i>: I want to go home!<br />
<i>Christopher Johnson:</i> We can't go home. Not anymore.<br />
<b>District 9</b> <b>(2009)</b></div>
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As much as the film’s message is about difference and tolerance, it is also about the aliens’ attempts – as <i>E.T.</i> (1982) might put it – 'to go home'. At best, the prawns are viewed as ‘pests’ by the humans as they have inhabited their world. This, of course, is why Wikus’ is tasked with overseeing the mass eviction of the alien prawns from the town to a huge camp out-of-town. Unlike the parktown prawn though they do more than infest the home, they overrun the structures of social order and social categorisation as well. It is only when Wikus begins metamorphosing into a prawn himself does he begin to understand these beings and begin to understand that social categories of place, space, home and alien are malleable, constantly shifting and, most importantly, socially generated. During his metamorphosis, and of possible interest to Douglas, Wikus also begins to see the humans with their powerful weaponry and interest in acquiring the alien weaponry as more dangerous than the prawns. Just as the parktown prawn is mischaracterised as a prawn (they are actually king crickets), Wikus, realises he has mischaracterised the <i>District 9</i> aliens. They are more than bottomfeeders- they too have a society, and they too have families. Most importantly, they too have homes, and the slums they are forced to inhabit on earth are not brought under control enough for the prawns' liking so as to appropriately function as a new 'home'. </div>
Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-84021644181170918532014-05-01T04:10:00.003-07:002014-05-01T05:22:30.960-07:00The Hunger Games and Roman History<div style="text-align: justify;">
The following essay is written by <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/share/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/A-E/bradley-guy-dr-overview_new.html" target="_blank">Guy Bradley</a> and relates to the sciSCREEN centering on The Hunger Games.</div>
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The Roman allusions in the Hunger Games are myriad and clearly intentional. Suzanne Collins has stated in interviews that the ancient world, and in particular gladiatorial games, was the inspiration for the idea of an autocratic government forcing people to fight to the death for the entertainment of the masses. <br />
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The link is made explict throughout the series. To give some examples. The name for the fictional state of Panem, Latin for bread, is a direct lifting from Juvenal’s (and Fronto’s) famous phrase that the plebs are only interested in panem et circenses, bread and circuses. Juvenal is referring to chariot racing in the circus, circenses, but Collins draws more heavily on the gladiatorial games. The term ‘Games’ comes from the Latin ‘Ludi’, originally meaning festivals with a variety of different entertainments (gladiatorial combats became popular only towards the end of the Roman Republic, and never surpassed chariot racing).<br />
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The idea of a Capitol dominating and exploiting its outlying districts echoes the primary place of Rome within an empire made up of provinces. The names of the privileged elite in the Capitol are predominantly Roman, creating overtones of a Rome-like decadence. For instance, the autocratic president Coriolanus echoes the arrogant patrician of the same name from early Rome; the gamesmaker Seneca, like his namesake who was an advisor the emperor Nero, is forced to commit suicide by an all-powerful leader. Other names are Roman in origin, but less directly mirror their ancient counterparts: the talkshow host Caesar alluding to the dictator Julius Caesar, and Plutarch, a Greek biographer in the Roman empire whose work inspired many of Shakespeare’s ancient characters<br />
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It is not just Rome that provides the source material here. The 'Reaping' of tributes consciously reworks the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Crete demanded a regular annual tribute of youths from Athens, who would be sacrificed to the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. Collins says that Katniss is a ‘futuristic Theseus’, the hero who volunteers to face the Minotaur and by killing him overturns this cruel system. Spartacus is another acknowledged allusion, a slave forced to fight in the arena, who then leads a rebellion against Rome – luckily Katniss meets a better end than his followers, who were crucified along the Appian Way.<br />
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The Games themselves echo many Roman themes. Just as in Rome, the staging of the Games is as important as the event itself. The tributes are paraded before the adoring crowds in chariots, just as gladiators paraded in their colourful armour before fighting. Gladiators were typically slaves, condemned to fight; yet they could win considerable prestige through success in the games, and the lure of the arena was such that even free Romans volunteered on occasion to fight. <br />
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Training and skill mattered as much to Roman gladiators as in the Hunger Games. In the Hunger Games the tributes from some districts, career tributes or ‘Careers’ for short, are trained for the Games from an early age. All tributes get some rudimentary training in weaponry and survival skills, in the equivalent of Roman gladiator barracks, with help from winners of the Games (just as gladiator trainers, lanistae, were often retired gladiators). Like gladiators, some tributes have specialised training in various weaponry, though archer gladiators were rare: presumably the risk to the audience was too high, though predictably the ‘bad’ emperor Commodus had a go on regular occasions. In the Hunger Games, comparative amateurs come up against more highly trained adversaries. Untrained tributes are expected to have little chance and in Rome, highly trained or veteran gladiators seemed to have much better chances of winning. However, one of the most notable contrasts with Rome is that the imagined scenario is more bloodthirsty than most gladiatorial games. One of the surprises that has emerged from modern study is that gladiators were relatively infrequently killed. They spent much time training, didn’t fight very often, and it’s estimated that only 10% or so were executed by their opponent when they lost in the 1st c. AD. The editor, the provider of the Games, has a financial incentive not to allow too many gladiators to be killed off: they represented a substantial investment of his time and expense that it would be better to reuse later. The Darwinian scenario of the Hunger Games is closer to the execution of prisoners by sword and by condemnation to the beasts that accompanied the more ritualised and carefully staged pairings of gladiator types. <br />
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There are some interesting parallels between the behaviour of the audience of the arena and of the Hunger Games, though the televising of the spectacle leaves the audience more detached from the action. The whims of both, and their thirst for blood, ultimately drives the spectacle and influences the outcome. The gamesmakers manipulate the situation to favour particular outcomes, and play the audience. In Rome the emperor is the primary patron of the plebs, and losing them would make his position precarious. Appealing to the crowd and to the verdict of the gamesmaker/editor is critical in both scenarios, and more realistic than films like Gladiator, which probably underplay the gladiators’ subjection to the whims of the crowd.<br />
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Clearly then this is not a positive conception of ancient Rome: contrast, for instance, the way that the founders of the US constitution drew on Rome for its Republican political models. Roman history has always been a source of negative as well as positive examples, from which you may, as Livy says, ‘select what to emulate and what to avoid’. Inevitably it is difficult to escape the influence of our sources: the Hunger Games draws on the moralising perspective of ancient authors like Juvenal to emphasise the complicity and shallowness of the audience. There’s also something of Gibbon’s outlook from the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the decadence of the Capitol’s corrupt elite. But some elements are rather perceptive and plausible, particularly the reflections on power and popularity, and the emphasis on the nexus of elite power and the whims of the audience. Just as the gladiatorial games were ultimately a manifestation of the powerlessness of slaves in Roman society, so the Hunger Games provides a powerful warning about the consequences of autocracy, wrapped up in some surprisingly traditional clothing.</div>
Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-42379699652725600062014-04-14T08:19:00.001-07:002014-05-22T03:52:50.231-07:00Lars and the Real Girl - May 29th at HEB<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Lars and the Real Girl (cert. 12) from 6pm on May 29th at the Hadyn Ellis Building </b></div>
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Sometimes you find love where you’d least expect it. Just ask Lars, a sweet but quirky guy who thinks he’s found the girl of his dreams in a life-sized doll named Bianca. Lars is completely content with his artificial girlfriend, helped along by a supportive community of colleagues, friends and family, but when he develops feelings for Margo, an attractive co-worker, Lars finds himself lost in a unique love triangle, hoping to somehow discover the real meaning of true love. Offbeat and endearing, this romantic comedy takes a fresh look at dating and relationships and dares to ask the question: What’s so wrong with being happy?</div>
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Join us for a <b>FREE</b> screening of the film followed by a sciSCREEN discussion touching on issues of mental health, healthcare, community, religion and relationships from a panel of academic experts.<br />
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Refreshments will be provided.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/lpV5GDGPCVY" width="420"></iframe>
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<b>Date: </b>Thursday 29th May<br />
<b>Time:</b> 6pm<br />
<b>Venue:</b> Hadyn Ellis Building, Maindy Road, Cardiff<br />
<b>Book at:</b> <a href="http://events.cardiff.ac.uk/view/sciscreen-lars-and-the-real-girl/" target="_blank">Lars and the Real Girl</a><br />
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Tickets are free but must be booked in advance.<br />
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Sponsored by the <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/research/neuroscience-mental-health" target="_blank">Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute</a> as part of a series of events exploring mental health and neuroscience issues.</div>
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Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-80972789540970831922014-03-26T06:52:00.001-07:002014-03-26T09:07:25.178-07:00Surveillance and the Search in The Hunger Games<br />
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The following essay is written by <a href="http://sites.cardiff.ac.uk/cesagen/people/dr-jamie-lewis/" target="_blank">Dr. Jamie Lewis</a> and relates to The Hunger Games sciSCREEN.</div>
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<b>Disclaimer: I</b> approach this essay as someone who has not read the books and who has only watched the Hunger Games Part 1.</div>
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The central premise of <i>The Hunger Games</i>, that of kids killing each other for public spectacle, is extremely chilling and disturbing. To this end, <i>The Hunger Games</i> revokes memories of William Golding’s dystopian novel ‘Lord of the Flies’, which itself was adapted for film in 1963, and again in 1990. It also has a nod, well more of a bow actually, to the 1975 classic RollerBall in which Jonathan, like Katniss, defeats the purpose of the game by deciding not to kill their opponent; an act which not only changes the rules of the game but an act which presumably sets in motion a challenge to the ruling elite – a spark to ignite the uprising. The film is therefore far more than a killing spree. For me, the film is a commentary on the inequality of society, presented in the increasingly popular young adult action-romance genre that includes films such as the Twilight Saga and the Harry Potter series. However, it is the underpinning social commentary that the film provides which, in my opinion, elevates <i>The Hunger Games</i> above similar contemporary pictures. The film takes us on ride from the past (with references to Roman gladiatorial events and circuses underpinned by a David and Goliath narrative) to the present (of TV screens, trains, and an ever expanding celebrity gaze) and into a future (of forcefields, trackerjackers and genetically engineered animals). To attempt to unpack all of the central threads in the film would therefore be a foolhardy endeavour. There are far too many. For the purposes of this essay I will therefore focus on a couple motifs that interest me as a sociologist.</div>
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<b>Safari</b></div>
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‘A journey of expedition, for hunting, exploration or investigation, especially in East Africa.’</div>
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In <i>The Hunger Games</i> we are privy to two aspects of the concept of ‘safari’ – ‘the hunt or the search’ and ‘the journey’</div>
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<i>The Hunt/ The Search</i></div>
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In one of the first scenes in the film, we find Katniss resisting the State by illegally foraging for food in the forests of District 12. She is hunting food presumably to take home to feed her family. It is the hunting skills she develops growing up in the forests along with other essential survival skills which providers her with the necessary attributes to survive being hunted by a group of contestants during <i>The Hunger Games</i>. To hunt in packs (a nod to our primitive pasts) is a tactic some of the contestants deploy during the games as they target Katniss who they perceive to be a significant threat to them winning the contest.</div>
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Whilst we see the concept of hunting in its literal form figure prominently in the film, we also see ‘the hunt’ in a more metaphorical presence. The title of the film mirrors its main event – <i>The Hunger Games</i> - where the hunt is on discover the last ‘tribute’ standing who will be crowned the victor. Such a search is presumably a chilling commentary on the explosion of talent shows such as X Factor, and Britain’s Got Talent that attempt to find the next new star and survival reality shows such as Castaway and 71 Degrees North, which also catapults its contestants into the public domain. Dressed up in more grotesque form, <i>The Hunger Games</i> does far more than create the next star though. The sadistic annual games serves the purpose of distracting those based in the districts from the realities of their life – from poverty, from inequality and from every day hunger. A Marxist might speak of the games as the ‘opium to the masses’ – distracting the unprivileged from the reality of their shared situations. This might explain why the districts have not routinely come together in revolt against the Capitol – an apathy that, in part, borders on voluntary servitude. Of course, Rue’s death watched together by inhabitants of District 11 on one of the large telescreens does cause a communal emotional response – what Durkheim might have called ‘collective effervescence’- that sets in motion a mini riot instigated by Rue’s father. However, that the technology screening the events is seemingly one way, with little opportunity for the citizens of District 11 to communicate with one another other than through communally watching events unfold in controlled areas, meant that a spontaneous mob-like reaction was quashed relatively abruptly. Nevertheless, the tantalising tagline for the next film Catching Fire that ‘every revolution begins with a spark’ suggests that a more significant, organised uprising is not too far away.</div>
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<i>The Journey</i></div>
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The film’s central character is Katniss Everdeen and it is through her eyes with which we see most of the world. Katniss’ personal journey is one of adaptation. Ironically, despite its obvious dangers, in many ways she is more comfortable in the virtual forests of <i>The Hunger Games</i> that remind her of the forests she grew up in, than she is in front of the gaze of the TV cameras and during some of the lavish spectacles in the build-up to the main event. In the spotlight, Katniss feels out of place, and much of her training is tailored towards being seen to be more approachable, lucid and confident on camera. Developments in such personal characteristics are a feature of many people’s teenage years (although it may not extend to television appearances). Katniss’ personal development is not the only journey we are taken on in <i>The Hunger Games</i> though. Although situated in a static present, the film juxtaposes ideas of the past, the near past, the near future and a possible dystopian future. The symbolic scene of the train moving from the impoverished boroughs of District 12 whose primary industry is coal, passing through some of the other under-privileged districts predicated on agriculture and livestock through to the wealthy districts that manufacture electronics and weapons is especially poignant. Such a journey reflects some significant human developments – the move from pre-industrial society, to industrial society and into a new technological age of virtual reality and xenotransplantation. Of course, such ‘progression’ is also compartmentalised in today’s world. The districts of Panem could be seen to represent different areas of the world at present. Today, we have societies built on industrialization, others on agriculture, whilst others still have entered a new technological age. These are often conceptualised as stages in a progression in which countries, communities and individuals endeavor to own the products of their own labour.</div>
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<span lang="EN"><b>Surveillance</b></span></div>
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<span lang="EN">Inequality between the Capitol and the Districts is perhaps best illustrated by the divide between the technological haves and the technological have nots. In the Capitol, there have been significant developments in science and technology that include advancements in technologies of inspection and surveillance, developments in genetics, and significant augmentation in virtual reality. These enhancements are countered by the scenes in the poorer districts where there is a conspicuous absence of technologies – mobile phones, televisions, the internet etc. Like many dystopias, it is difficult to discuss the film without considering George Orwell’s 1949 book <i>1984</i>. Like 1984, the citizens of Panem are subjected to omnipresent governmental surveillance and control. <i>The Hunger Games</i> itself, acts as an intense microcosm of what actually happens out in the real world. The tributes playing the game have to fight to stay alive, they have little in the way of resources and they are controlled, managed – even stage-managed – by the puppeteers in the Capitol. Both those playing the game and those living in the district have a carrot too. The carrot for those in the games, is raw and fundamental – the reward for winning the event is their life. The cult and celebratory status that comes with winning is presumably a further bonus. For those in the real-world, <i>The Hunger Games</i> is a type of annual entertainment. From the relief of not being selected or having a child selected to participate in <i>The Games</i> to the sense of district pride, identity and outright passion in supporting your tribute as you would support your local football, rugby, hockey, netball team, <i>The Games</i> act as a source of escapism for those watching back in the districts. Citizens of the districts back their tributes, willing them to win. As President Snow declares: ‘Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. Spark is fine, as long as it’s contained’. Too much hope then can move an issue from an inconvenience to a serious situation very quickly. This is especially true if one of the winners, in this case Katniss, becomes bigger than <i>The Games</i> itself.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN">In the same way that technology is the privilege of the Party in Orwell’s Big Brother, technology is the privilege of the Capitol in <i>The Hunger Games</i>. Technology is used to control, manipulate (sometimes genetically), strike fear (for example, through the release of Wolf Mutts), and for entertainment. As such, the concept of Big Brother in <i>The Hunger Games</i> is a mix of Orwell’s Big Brother in which the state is watching and surveilling its citizens and the UK television programme which places strangers together in a house, locked away from the outside world for around 3 months as a form of voyeuristic entertainment. When speculating as to the reasons the citizens of Panem continue to watch the games year in year out: we might propose tradition, utter fear of the repercussions of resistance, sadistic enjoyment or morbid fascination – in the way we sometimes can’t take our eyes off a road accident. Ironically, though, the extremely violent concept of <i>The Games</i> serves the purpose of pacifying the masses. The tributes are not the only ones surveilled and controlled, so too are the citizen of the districts who watch <i>The Games</i> on the large telescreens.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN">When scholars write about surveillance, their starting point is often Jeremey Bentham and the panoptican. The panoptican describes the architecture of a prison, where prisoners in a cell may occupy the circumference, whilst the officer is positioned in a watchtower in the centre. From their vantage point, the single watchman or woman can observe all the prisoners, but cannot be seen. This places them in the position of being able to surveill all the prisoners without them knowing they are being watched. Of course, the same systems of surveillance that are built to protect, may be feared for their power to keep track of personal lives, and groups. The control room of the virtual reality games reminds us of this design. But where once surveillance was relatively static focussing on a single space (such as the panoptican), authors such as David Lyon comment on how the means of communication is increasingly mobile and people cannot hope to evade surveillance. In <i>The Hunger Games</i> this is achieved through remote spies such as Tracker Jackers and JabberJays. Even when Katniss moves towards the far-flung boundaries of the virtual forest, she is tracked and chased back towards the centre by a fire ball. This move from the outskirts of the forests back towards its heart also mirrors a central theme in the film. Katniss shuns the limelight, her move to the borders may not have just been a survival technique, it may have also been her yearning for the familiar. Indeed, the comparative privacy of District 12’s forests (the most remote area of the most remote district), which we see at the beginning of the film contrasts with the end of the movie in which Katniss is positioned centre stage in one of a number of celebratory public appearances.</span></div>
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Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-35370684097724570462014-03-24T04:59:00.002-07:002014-04-07T10:48:01.153-07:00District 9 on April 10th<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">District 9 (certificate 15), Thursday April 10th from 6pm </span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The next Cardiff sciSCREEN will follow a screening of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136608/" target="_blank">District 9</a> in the <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/estat/newbuildingsandrefurbs/current/maindy-park.html" target="_blank">Hadyn Ellis Building</a>, Cardiff University from 6pm.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The panel will include <a href="http://www.cf.ac.uk/jomec/contactsandpeople/profiles/barrell-howard.html"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Howard Barrell</span></a> (apartheid
and South African politics), <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/G-H/professor-gordon-hughes-overview.html">Gordon
Hughes</a> (policing and urban security), <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/I-L/dr-nick-johns-overview.html"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Nick Johns</span></a> (race
and racism),<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/cplan/about-us/staff/richard-gale" target="_blank">Richard Gale</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(residential segregation)
and <a href="http://medicine.cf.ac.uk/person/dr-martha-triantafilou/" target="_blank">Martha Triantafilou</a> (infection and immunity).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Tickets:</strong> are <b>FREE</b> but must be <b>booked in advance</b>. Book tickets <a href="http://events.cardiff.ac.uk/view/sciscreen-district9/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">here</a>. Please be aware this film is a certificate 15. It contains <b>strong language and violence</b>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Showing:</strong> 6 pm. Please arrive 10-15 minutes before the showing starts so we can check tickets and get you to your seat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Venue:</strong><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> Hadyn Ellis Building, Cardiff University, Maindy Road, CF24 4HQ:</span> <a href="http://medicine.cf.ac.uk/place/hadyn-ellis-building-cathays-park/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Location information</a>.</span><br />
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The event is sponsored by Cardiff University's <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/" target="_blank">School of Social Sciences</a>.</span></div>
Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-25707711703829527472014-03-03T06:31:00.002-08:002014-03-03T06:31:24.884-08:00Hadyn Ellis Building sciSCREENsFor those who have never been to the new Hadyn Ellis Building, here is a picture of the lecture theatre where we will be screening the films for <a href="http://www.cardiffsciscreen.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-diving-bell-and-butterfly-march.html" target="_blank">The Diving Bell and the Butterfly</a> and <a href="http://www.cardiffsciscreen.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-hunger-games-1-march-20th.html" target="_blank">The Hunger Games 1</a> sciSCREENs this month.<br />
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Please remember both events are <b>FREE, BUT BOOKING IS REQUIRED</b>. You can register for the event <a href="http://www.cardiffsciscreen.co.uk/" target="_blank">HERE</a>.</div>
Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-48114609106809680162014-02-28T04:10:00.002-08:002014-03-18T07:16:00.249-07:00The Hunger Games 1 - March 20thAs well as the <a href="http://cardiffsciscreen.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-diving-bell-and-butterfly-march.html" target="_blank">Diving Bell and the Butterfly</a> sciSCREEN on March 11th, we will be running an event on <b>Thursday March 20th</b>.<br />
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As part of <a href="http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/national-science-engineering-week" target="_blank">Science and Engineering Week </a> we will present the <b>Hunger Games 1</b> at the <a href="http://medicine.cf.ac.uk/place/hadyn-ellis-building-cathays-park/" target="_blank">Hadyn Ellis Building</a>, Cardiff University. Following a 17.30 screening of the film, we present a FREE drinks reception and panel discussion.<br />
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Speakers will include<br />
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<li><a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/biosi/contactsandpeople/stafflist/i-l/jones-rhys-dr-overview_new.html" style="text-align: center;" target="_blank">Dr. Rhys Jones</a><span style="text-align: center;"> </span><span style="text-align: center;">on Survival of the Fittest</span></li>
<li><a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/share/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/A-E/bradley-guy-dr-overview_new.html" style="text-align: center;" target="_blank">Dr. Guy Bradley</a><span style="text-align: center;"> on Roman </span><span style="text-align: center;">Gladiatorial</span><span style="text-align: center;"> Games</span></li>
<li><a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/cplan/about-us/staff/ana-moragues-faus" style="text-align: center;" target="_blank">Dr. Ana Moragues Faus</a><span style="text-align: center;"> on Food and Food security</span></li>
<li><a href="http://jonquinn.org/about/" style="text-align: center;" target="_blank">Dr. Jonathan Quinn</a><span style="text-align: center;"> on Virtual Reality</span></li>
<li><span style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/G-H/dr-tom-hall-overview.html" target="_blank">Dr. Tom Hall</a> on Inequality, Class and Poverty</span></li>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Timings</span></strong></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 15pt;">5.30pm - Film screening</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">7.55pm - Refreshments<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Segoe UI","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">8.20pm - Talks and
discussion</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Segoe UI', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 15pt;">9.15pm - Finish</span></div>
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Refreshments and snacks will be provided and everyone attending is welcome to take part in the discussion part of the event.<br />
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The event is free, <b>BUT BOOKING IS REQUIRED.</b> You can register for the event <b><a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-hunger-games-cardiff-sciscreen-tickets-10765984349" target="_blank">HERE</a>.</b><br />
For more information please ring 02920 876936 or email publicbookings@cardiff.ac.uk.<br />
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This event is sponsored by the <a href="http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/" target="_blank">British Science Association</a> and the <a href="http://wales.gov.uk/" target="_blank">Welsh Government</a>. <b>Please note</b> that the certificate for this film is <b>15</b>.<br />
<br />Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-29616795683882702652014-02-27T07:42:00.002-08:002014-03-06T05:15:10.820-08:00The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - March 11th from 6pm<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">The next Cardiff sciSCREEN event will follow a free
6.00pm screening of the film <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterfly_%28film%29" target="_blank">The Diving Bell and the Butterfly</a> at the <a href="http://medicine.cf.ac.uk/place/hadyn-ellis-building-cathays-park/" target="_blank">Hadyn Ellis Building</a>, Cardiff University on Tuesday 11th of March as part of <a href="https://www.bna.org.uk/events/view.php?permalink=LSFNQ12UE9" target="_blank">Brain Awareness Week</a>. Following the screening Cardiff sciSCREEN present a <b>FREE</b> drinks reception and panel discussion. We will explore themes including the neuroscience of stroke, locked-in syndrome, the philosophy of perception and mind, and creative nonfiction related to illness.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">Speakers confirmed include:</span></span></span><br />
<ul><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/contactsandpeople/profiles/kitzinger-jenny.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">Professor Jenny Kitzinger</span></a></span></span></li>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/contactsandpeople/profiles/gwyn-richard.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">Professor Richard Gwyn</span></a></span></span></li>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://cardiff.ac.uk/encap/contactsandpeople/profiles/gray-richard.html" target="_blank">Dr. Richard Gray</a> </span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/biosi/contactsandpeople/postgraduatestudents/diaz-claris-miss-overview_new.html" target="_blank">Claris Diaz</a></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/bAQpKWc9SbM" width="560"></iframe></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%;"><br />Wine and snacks will be provided and everyone attending is welcome to take part in the debate.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">The event is free, <b>BUT BOOKING IS REQUIRED. </b>You can register for the event <b><a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sciscreen-the-diving-bell-the-butterfly-tickets-10751765821" target="_blank">HERE</a></b>.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">For more
information, please contact Catherine Hortop at <b>02920 688341</b> or on email at
<b>neuroscience@cardiff.ac.uk</b></span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; tab-stops: -36.0pt 0cm 36.0pt 72.0pt 108.0pt 144.0pt 180.0pt 216.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helv;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This event is sponsored by the </span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/research/neuroscience/" target="_blank">Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute.</a> Please note that the certificate for this film is <b>12.</b></span></span><b></b></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>
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<br />Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-29412271917729372382014-02-26T09:13:00.000-08:002014-02-26T09:27:11.477-08:00Cardiff sciSCREEN's 4th Birthday treats<br />
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<img height="200" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQz8XI5vIsAG2M_DnqTfAyGfhSdLjqjZGJua9HJ9jXbxicXJvHP4sACVCeB" style="margin-left: -23px; margin-right: -22px; margin-top: 0px;" width="198" /></div>
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Cardiff sciSCREENer,</div>
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Our last event, which followed a screening of the film Her at <a href="http://www.chapter.org/" target="_blank">Chapter Arts Centre</a>, was the 30th film we have discussed. In addition to these films, we also supported the first <a href="http://www.watch-africa.co.uk/" target="_blank">Wales African Film Festival</a> and were involved in the 2012 <a href="http://www.cheltenhamfestivals.com/science" target="_blank">Times Cheltenham Science Festival</a>.</div>
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March will be our 4th birthday, and as a treat we will be organizing 2 Cardiff sciSCREENS, as well as another one in April. These will be held in the new <a href="http://medicine.cf.ac.uk/place/hadyn-ellis-building-cathays-park/" target="_blank">Hadyn Ellis Building</a> at Cardiff University.</div>
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We will be in touch soon with information on these events. In the meantime, you can find a list of all the films we have organized our events around, as well as speaker essays, <a href="http://www.cardiffsciscreen.co.uk/films" target="_blank">here</a>. Many thanks to all those who have attended our events and continue to support the programme. For more up-to-date information, please follow us on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/sciscreen" target="_blank">Twitter</a>.</div>
Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-60183823106077904912014-02-26T04:28:00.001-08:002014-02-26T04:38:02.224-08:00Burgers, Baileys and Pugs in Denim Jackets: The Role of Social Isolation in “Her”<div style="text-align: justify;">
The following is an essay written by <a href="http://medicine.cf.ac.uk/person/katie-swaden-lewis/">Katie Lewis</a> and relates to the sciSCREEN discussion after a screening of the film Her.
When you first heard the storyline for “Her”, you might have thought,</div>
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“A guy falling in love with his Operating System (OS) sounds quite weird. I had that teenage phase where I thought social interaction was too much effort and spent 12 hours a day playing World of Warcraft, but I don’t think I’d ever have taken it that far”. Hence, part of the success of this film rests on how believable or understandable the story is to us, the audience. Whether it works or not, this film highlights that meaningful connections with others are a fundamental human need, and it turns out that science has a lot to say about this.<br />
<br />
If one day you thought, “cardiovascular disease, that sounds like fun” and you asked some people how you would go about getting it, after giving you a few weird looks, they would most likely recommend smoking 10 packs of cigarettes a day, going to McDonald’s for every meal and washing it all down with a bucket of whiskey (or something along those lines). This is also what health professionals thought. However, researchers were surprised to find that you can double (or even quadruple) your risk of chronic diseases simply by being socially isolated. Recent research even argues that its effects are on par to smoking and alcohol consumption. In addition to physical health, loneliness also has a negative impact on mental health. For example, being lonely increases the risk of depression, results in a poorer prognosis for those with dementia, and heightens risk of relapse for those with schizophrenia.
The findings for physical illness are particularly intriguing because the medical profession traditionally held the view that psychological and physical issues were very separate things. So what accounts for this association? One argument was that lonely individuals are more likely to partake in unhealthy behaviours. In other words, if you’re lonely, you are more likely to eat KFC for 6 nights in a row plus there is no-one there to say, “why are you drinking Bailey’s from a shoe?” or “stop eating that black stuff on the George Foreman grill”.<br />
<br />
However, research suggests that while social isolation can influence health behaviours, its effects on health persist even when controlling for a range of factors such as smoking, alcohol, diet and exercise. In particular, perceived social isolation (more commonly known as “loneliness”) seems to be more important in increasing this risk. This suggests that there are physical consequences of loneliness that are independent of our behaviours. In fact, lonely individuals have been found to have heightened levels of stress hormones and inflammatory markers in their blood, plus a range of other physical characteristics associated with the development of chronic diseases.<br />
<br />
So why might humans have this detrimental response to loneliness? Most of us have heard someone describe the sensation of breaking up with a partner as “hurting”. However, research suggests that this statement is closer to the truth than it sounds. It turns out that the areas of the brain that are activated when we feel socially rejected overlap largely with those involved when we experience physical pain. Just like physical pain serves an adaptive purpose -- for example, “It hurts when I rub this cheese grater on my face, so I will stop doing that” -- so does social pain. Evolutionary psychologists propose that feeling pain in response to isolation bestowed an evolutionary advantage to our ancestors because it motivated them to seek connection to social groups. Groups promote survival through increased access to care, food and protection. They also act as an arena for meeting potential mates, and the protection of the group would mean that any resultant offspring would be more likely to survive and pass on their genes. Hence, over time a desire for social bonds became central to being human.<br />
<br />
This need for connection can drive lonely individuals to seek substitutes in order to limit the negative consequences of social isolation. These substitutes can be animals, for instance, a lot of us may have suddenly found ourselves talking to our dog, even though we know they cannot communicate in the same way back. Some people might take this anthropomorphism a bit further and dress their pug in ‘revolting’ denim jackets. Studies even show that making people feel lonely will increase their likelihood of attributing human characteristics to inanimate objects such as gadgets.
Hence, if people attribute human characteristics to things to combat loneliness, then it is understandable that Theo would attempt to combat any feelings of disconnectedness by forming a substitute connection to a very human-like OS. Thus, at face value, a guy falling in love with his OS might seem weird, but knowing what we know about human beings, it might not be that far fetched.
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Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-793068887861640942014-02-21T06:10:00.004-08:002014-02-26T06:00:38.605-08:00Tim Burton, Psychology and The Nightmare Before ChristmasThe following is a presentation produced by <a href="http://medicine.cf.ac.uk/person/dr-rhys-bevan-jones/">Rhys Bevan Jones</a> and relates to a sciSCREEN discussion around Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="400" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/31479911" width="476"></iframe>Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-32757302787605422542014-02-21T05:47:00.003-08:002014-02-21T05:47:14.918-08:00Music and Emotional Manipulation at the Movies
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The following is an essay written by <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/biosi/contactsandpeople/stafflist/u-z/watson-alan-dr-overview_new.html" target="_blank">Dr. Alan Watson</a> and relates to the film Her. <br />
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The use of music in films is the secret weapon that producers use to
manipulate our emotions and shape our responses to the story. The same footage
may appear romantic, sad or even sinister through the choice of music and within
these broad confines, more subtle gradations of emotion can also be engendered.
A little personal reflection will confirm that a piece of music can change how
we feel within seconds, which is quite remarkable for a stimulus which is not
found in the natural world. Though we may react emotionally to an ambient sound
such as birdsong (perhaps as a consequence of the associations created by early
memories) our feelings are unrelated to its real purpose or its meaning to the
animal concerned. Furthermore, musical sounds are much richer in structure than
natural sounds. The salient parameters include not only melody and rhythm, but
also sound quality (timbre), harmony, and key (major versus minor). Despite some
exceptions, music that triggers happy or positive emotions is more likely to be
in a major key and at a brisk tempo, while melancholic, peaceful or romantic
pieces tend to be either slower or in minor keys or both. Music intended to
frighten is often discordant with strong or irregular rhythms and large changes
of dynamics. Within a given culture, the lexicon of music-associated emotions is
largely shared regardless of each individual’s listening preferences, which
is something that film producers must rely on if they are to pull off the
trick.<br />
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Different aspects of music are processed in distinct regions of the brain.
Where there is an insistent beat, we feel the urge to tap, nod or even dance in
time. These activities require us to predict the beat, for which we must employ
internal oscillators or metronomes. The brain does not have any that are
dedicated to sound alone, so those that are used to control rhythmic movements
(e.g. walking) are pressed into service, hence our compulsion to move. The
greater mystery however, is the access that music has to both the mental and
physical dimensions of our emotions. It strongly activates the reward system of
the brain (which is needed to ensure that we carry out tasks such as eating and
reproductive behaviour necessary for our survival) and influences the emotional
centres of the limbic system. Our mental responses may be associated with
physical ones such as increases in heart rate, changes in blood flow and the
prickling sensation of hair rising on the skin. Why it is so effective in doing
this is a mystery, as some of the features of music most effective at hijacking
this system (e.g. harmony and key) are recent human inventions and can have
played no part in shaping the evolution of our brain.<br />
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Coming at last to the film, one of the most interesting features of the
soundtrack is paradoxically, the use of silence or ambient sounds to accompany
the greater part of the story. The music of the introductory sequence is a
series of discords, almost a palate cleanser, after which the palpable silence
which follows is a relief. The representation of normal life is bland and
artificial and the backstory of the human characters is limited and two
dimensional. It is only the relationship with the operating system that is given
emotional depth and a musical narrative. The OS composes a piece to provide
tangible evidence of the relationship with Theodore for which there can be no
photographs and one activity that they can share on an equal footing is singing
together. Even when there is personal conflict, the music tells us that the
breakup does not engender anger or resentment, but only a feeling of loss as the
two main characters (one human, one virtual) find themselves inexorably drifting
apart. Neither does it allow us to consider that a group of operating systems
acting for their own benefit might be sinister or a threatening concept, a question
that is perhaps left to be explored in another story!</div>
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</div>
Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-56943699845246730802014-02-14T02:45:00.003-08:002014-02-26T05:59:32.450-08:00Can you find true love on the Internet? - Martin Graff VideoDear sciSCREENer,<br />
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In preparation for the Her sciSCREEN <a href="http://staff.glam.ac.uk/users/3843-mgraff" target="_blank">Dr. Martin Graff</a> from the University of Glamorgan has kindly shared this short video considering whether you can find true love on the Internet.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/cISWt-Ogt68" width="640"></iframe>Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-59786321617774583002014-02-14T02:38:00.000-08:002014-02-14T02:38:03.399-08:00Her - 6pm on Monday February 17th at ChapterThe next Cardiff sciSCREEN event will follow the 6.00pm screening of the film <a href="http://www.herthemovie.com/" target="_blank">'Her'</a> at Chapter Arts Centre on Monday February 17th.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/WzV6mXIOVl4" width="560"></iframe>
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Speakers will include <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/biosi/contactsandpeople/stafflist/u-z/watson-alan-dr-overview_new.html" target="_blank">Dr. Alan Watson</a>, <a href="http://martinjc.com/" target="_blank">Dr. Martin Chorley</a>, <a href="http://sites.cardiff.ac.uk/cesagen/people/dr-joan-haran/" target="_blank">Dr. Joan Haran</a> and <a href="http://medicine.cf.ac.uk/person/katie-swaden-lewis/" target="_blank">Katie Lewis</a>. Themes that will be explored in the sciSCREEN discussion include social isolation, emotional responses to sound, gender and audience engagement and developments in computing and Artificial Intelligence..<br />
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Tickets for the film are the usual prices and can be bought from <a href="http://www.chapter.org/" target="_blank">Chapter</a>. Tickets to the sciSCREEN event , which will begin around 8.10pm, are free, but must be booked over the phone or from the ticket desk in Chapter. Details on how to book can be found on the attached poster or by visiting <a href="http://www.cardiffsciscreen.co.uk/">www.cardiffsciscreen.co.uk</a>.Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-20119058028656868222013-11-21T04:37:00.002-08:002013-11-21T04:37:39.623-08:00Plausibility of the Cloning Scenario in the film MoonClearly central to the plot of this film are Sam’s clones. They appear not only to look and behave similarly (although there may be one or two hints that they aren’t absolutely identical) but also share a core memory set, although again there may be hints that these aren’t identical (e.g. a moment of hesitation about his daughter).<br />
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<br />So how realistic is this? The basic premise that human beings could be cloned is reasonable. Animals have been cloned over many years now using a range of reprogramming technologies – famously Dolly, but also cows, pigs, subhuman primates, and for all we know in some parts of the world, humans. However, in the film it is suggested that the original Sam left for the moon while his wife was still pregnant with his daughter and we find out that his daughter is now 15. Thus, assuming that the clones were derived when Sam was selected to go to the moon, we have a relatively short time for them to be produced. With current technology, cloning would require that the cloned embryos are implanted back into a womb and that they then proceed through development, are born, and then have to go through a normal process of maturation and development. 15 years would be too short a time, unless it could be accelerated in some way. Another possibility is that Sam was selected at birth for cloning or even that he was cloned at conception.<br /><br />A related, but even more troublesome issue is the mechanism by which memory, personality and other aspects of what makes Sam a particular human being are produced in all the clones. When the clones are woken they have language, knowledge about the space station, and appear to have a rich and emotionally relevant memory of a former life with Sam’s wife and daughter. With today’s technology this would entail first bringing up the clones through infancy and childhood into adulthood, allowing them to grow and learn (perhaps with the aid of “brainwashing” techniques ie producing false memories). This would take years and perhaps this was part of Gerty’s job .<br /><br />However, although we aren’t told so, I think there is an implicit suggestion that the memories are transferred in some more direct way. This is something that would be very difficult to even envision at the current time. Memory and habit formation are complex and involve tiny changes in billions of neurons. There are over 80 billion neurons in the adult human brain and each of those neurons may make thousands of connections with other neurons through synapses. Memories probably involve subtle changes in strength of these synapses and may involve large networks of neurons acting in concert. Currently it would be difficult to envisage how we could ever map that degree of complexity in a living human brain, never mind transfer it to another brain. So, although cloning Sam is a real and present possibility, producing multiple clones with identical knowledge banks is probably out of reach for the foreseeable future.</div>
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<a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/biosi/contactsandpeople/stafflist/q-t/rosser-anne-prof-overview_new.html" target="_blank">Written by Anne Rosser </a></div>
Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-34374709489546360122013-11-21T04:34:00.004-08:002013-11-21T04:34:46.862-08:00Memory Manipulation in Moon<div style="text-align: justify;">
The big reveal at the midpoint of the film ‘Moon’ is that Sam is some sort of clone, one in a series of clones that are activated, do their jobs and wear down before being ‘disposed of’, at which point the next clone is activated to take over, and on it goes. The intrigue occurs when a clone is activated activated while the previous one is still active, and this revealing the whole set-up to both of them.<br /><br />The way this system is maintained seems to hinge on the fact that each clone, upon ‘activation’ (for want of a better term) has a full set of memories, believing they are the original Sam, and have just woken up after a nasty crash. They haven’t though, they’ve just come out of storage. But this single element gives us a lot of information as to how this cloning process does, or perhaps doesn’t, work.<br /><br />Typically in sci-fi, a clone is what you get when you take DNA from an individual and use that to create a whole new human with their exact same DNA. But as even real life cloning experiments demonstrate, you don’t end up with an exact copy of the original person; you get a separate, independent organism that just happens to have identical DNA. Your DNA doesn’t have 100% influence over your eventual form, there’s a lot of nurture to go with the nature in something as complex as a human.</div>
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<br />But the Sam clones in Moon are identical, right down to their memories. And this is where it gets intriguing. DNA contains a great deal of information about us, but it doesn’t include memories. You get half your DNA from your mother, half from your father, but you aren’t born with half their memories in your head.<br /><br />The most ‘logical’ explanation would be that the cloned bodies are created and matured to the point of adulthood, then the original Sam’s memories are downloaded into them, like an operating system onto a hard drive.</div>
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But this takes the common ‘brain as a computer’ cliché a bit too far. The physical support mechanism of memories, as far as we can tell, is synapses and the configurations of connections between neurons. To ‘download’ and ‘edit’ a human memory like you would a computer hard drive, you’d need the ability to actually decipher what memories specific neuronal connections represent and to manipulate these connections to form specific new ones. At present, we’re nowhere near this level of neurological manipulation. It’s hard to say if anyone is even attempting it, so unlikely does it seem to modern science.<br /><br />This isn’t to say that the futuristic society of Moon won’t have this ability, but it seems unlikely, due to one undeniable observation; the clones all believe they are Sam, and whoever is in charge of the base has gone to very elaborate lengths to ensure that this delusion is maintained. There’s a whole ‘malfunctioning communication’ scenario set up to prevent him contacting his family, rules are in place to stop him wandering into more revealing areas. But if whoever is behind the whole system has the technology to manipulate the contents of memory and the brain, why would they do this? Wouldn’t it be easier to just implant the memory of having spoken to his family the day before, or even dampen his curiosity or feelings of isolation? They can adjust specific memories, what’s to stop them reducing specific feelings and emotions? Something we can arguably do now with medications.<br /><br />The point it, if you can so specifically manipulate the contents of someone’s memory and mind, you wouldn’t need to construct an elaborate set-up to maintain an illusion; you could do it directly. This doesn’t happen in Moon though, and the whole plot depends on the inability to control the clones with such direct effect.<br /><br />One alternative is that the original Sam was scanned in such detail that a meticulously precise digital image of his form was recorded and stored, containing all information right down to the arrangement of cells. This information could then be fed into some sort of futuristic biological 3D printer, and an identical copy is produced this way, right down to the connections in the brain which would suggest memories are copied too. It’s uncertain how this clone-creation process would work, but the fact the clones clearly break down after 3 years reveals that, even if they are human, they clearly aren’t as resilient as their natural-born counterparts.<br /><br />From such simple observations that aren’t even addressed in the film, complex extrapolations can be made, adding layers to the fictional world. And that’s why science is fun. </div>
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<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping" target="_blank">Written by Dean Burnett</a></div>
Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-81599590360769985442013-11-14T07:49:00.003-08:002013-11-14T07:49:37.058-08:00Who and What is Family?<div style="text-align: justify;">
Importantly, ‘generation’ and ‘family’ is something that is achieved through the everyday work of practical kinship. While the biological facts of generations are, to a certain extent, given, the realisation of generations and family in everyday life is something that we all achieve through our everyday practical interactional work with others. Each of us makes our family through the active mobilisation of relations with and among our kindred. We do not merely document our family tree, we actively construct narratives that create our family and ancestry, by drawing on individual and collective strategies that include or exclude particular individuals or groups of kin; what has been referred to as the ‘genealogical imagination’. In addition, families and relationships are constantly subject to change, through the passage of generations and the everyday status passages such as births, marriages, death and divorce.<br /><br />The premise of this film can be found within many classic narratives of the English novel, which are predicated on themes of inheritance and genealogy. Lost and found relationships and entitlements are among the stock narrative functions of nineteenth-century fiction. It also a recurrent preoccupation within our popular culture, for example it can be found within the recent cases reported by the mass media in a global frenzy of children who have been considered ‘stolen’ because their phenotype (typically white, blond and blue eyed) did not fit with that of their ‘family’ who have tended to be on the margins of society. The cases in Greece of ‘Maria found living with the gypsies’ and ‘snatched Maria’, ‘snatched blonde angel’; of another ‘abducted girl’ and a 2 year old boy found with Roma families in Ireland who was immediately placed into care only later to be reunited following DNA testing. This brings to mind the recurrent theme of ‘child snatching’, which is an age-old fear and has a long history, for example within stories from the bible to the early European fairy tales replete with lost and found children. It has additional contemporary poignancy when we all know of the stories of children who are missing today- from the high-profile cases of Madeleine McCann, and Ben Needham, which are the stuff of every parental nightmare, through to the trafficking of children that remains a hidden but significant problem in Europe. This is an issue which also touches closer to home; in Wales there were 34 reported cases of human trafficking last year, although it is thought that the majority of cases go unreported.<br /><br />Our cultural history includes many contexts in which families, kinship and descent have been constructed. We have not had to wait for modern genetic science, still less the results of the Human Genome Project, to recognise that family members can share common characteristics, and that they are inherited. Family resemblances – physical and moral - have been recognised for centuries: we need only to see how successive portrait painters have captured the family ‘look’ of generations of nobility and royal families, for instance. Selective breeding of domestic animals and foodstuffs has been going on for generations. Pedigree pigs and thoroughbred horses, noble lineages and royal successions have all depended on a practical understanding of inheritance, blood-lines and lineages. Title, position, and property depend upon the genealogical documentation of the family tree, and have done so for centuries. <br /><br />It is also clear that ‘ordinary’ families have ample opportunity to identify their relationships in terms of categories of inheritance. Family resemblance, after all, is a commonplace. The inheritance of physical characteristics has been a taken-for-granted observation, and the absence of physical resemblance prima facie evidence of bastardy. Likewise, the inheritance of aspects of character, such as courage, talent, moral stability and sanity is subject to widespread and firmly entrenched beliefs.<br /><br />Notions such as ‘bad blood’ in families and its manifestations in successive generations are also a recurrent theme in the ordinary discourse of family life, generations and inheritance. ‘Families’ are replete with secrets, unspoken pasts, and innuendoes. The recent UK television series ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ illustrates this quite dramatically (BBC). A number of ‘celebrities’ ‘embark on a voyage of personal discovery’ and trace their family trees, in a search for ‘origins’. Several discover things about their own family past and their close relatives that they never knew, and about whom there was a veil of secrecy. Things were not talked about openly in front of the children, and on occasions people were written out of the family’s collective narrative altogether. While subject to the same devices and performed emotions as any ‘reality TV’, these television programmes nonetheless encapsulate what may not be ‘typical’ family stories, but show how families may be morally risky spaces. <br /><br />Biomedical innovations have given the study of family and kinship a renewed significance, with a particular focus examining the impact of assistive reproductive technologies in shaping family. The complex possibilities created by the technologies of IVF, surrogate motherhood, reproductive cloning all have the potential to displace kinship. Family relations are now supplemented by a variety of novel and alternative modes of creating people and creating relations between people. For example, when the HFEA recommended (2007) that fertility clinics would no longer have to consider the ‘need for a father’ before proceeding with assisted fertility procedures, this provoked a huge amount of controversy. Studies suggest that these technologies may redefine and expand our ideas of family and relatedness, with family becoming something more fluid and subject to transformation. For example, assistive reproductive technologies have an impact on the commercialisation of parenthood; we can now buy babies, gametes and ‘gestational carriers’. It transforms the position of gay men and lesbian women who can obtain donated eggs and sperm, mitochondrial technologies mean that an individual can have three biological parents. Of course, this also has implications for the identity of those conceived using these technologies. Some argue that the increasing availability of these technologies gives rise to increasing social change and the formation of non-traditional family units produced through the new patterns of social relationships available, for example the processes of ‘kinning’ whereby the transnationally adopted child is made to be family. <br /><br />In sharp contrast, the new genetics of testing for familial inherited conditions tend, if anything, to strengthen the conventional categories of reproduction and biological relatedness. The biology of genetics reinforces the significance of traditional kinship categories, in reaffirming the biological relatedness of kindred. Genetic knowledge is seen to generate new forms of obligations and a large body of literature has focused on the ways in which people manage the burden of responsibility. Responsibility is predicated on judgments of trust and other moral evaluations, such as competence and capacity. Each of us makes our family through the active mobilisation of these individual and collective judgements and strategies – what to tell, who to tell, when to tell.<br /> </div>
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There is now a long and extensive tradition of work, spanning many decades, documenting family and community life in Wales. Family research, together with research on health and illness, has long been a core theme of the social sciences in Welsh universities. It is, therefore, especially appropriate that newer concerns with biomedical and social relations should be added to that research heritage. Seen from the point of view of the social scientist, new genetic medicine allows us to examine some traditional analytic themes and questions: How do people trace their relationships, and how do they express them? How do people maintain those ties in practical ways? How do people conceptualise the patterns of resemblance and individual difference that are observable among family members? How do people make everyday, practical decisions about sharing information with other family members? What does ‘family’ mean in everyday terms?</div>
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<b><br />Written by <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/sonms/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/featherstone-katie-overview_new.html" target="_blank">Katie Featherstone</a> from the School of Healthcare Sciences, Cardiff University.</b><br />
<br />This essay derives from previous work:<br />Featherstone K, Atkinson P, Bharadwaj A, Clarke AJ. (2006) Risky Relations: Family and kinship in the era of new genetics. Oxford: Berg.<br />
<br />Atkinson PA, Featherstone K, Gregory M. (2013) Kinscapes, Genescapes & Timescapes: Families Living With Genetic Risk Sociology of Health and Illness. [this is an open access paper and free to download]<br />Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-26493708493946159872013-11-14T07:41:00.000-08:002013-11-14T07:41:51.758-08:00‘Moon’: A Cultural Geographer’s View <div style="text-align: justify;">
Dr Jon Anderson is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the School of Planning & Geography, Cardiff University. For more on Jon’s work please visit <a href="http://www.spatialmanifesto.com/">www.spatialmanifesto.com</a><br /><br />TS Eliot said it is the instinct of every living thing to persist in its own being. Not just humans or animals or insects or viruses, but all living things; and from the example of ‘Moon’, we can perhaps say that Eliot’s assertion also includes clones.<br /><br />And if we think about it, why wouldn’t Eliot’s assertion include clones too? As the example of the Sam Bells suggest, clones are living beings, and each seeks to realise themselves. If we accept this, then we may ask what does it matter how they were conceived or the nature of their origin? We can think about this not simply in terms of clones in ‘Moon’, replicants in ‘Blade Runner’, or fabricants in David Mitchell’s ‘Cloud Atlas’, but also in terms of ourselves in terms of how we are, to some extent or other, clones of our parents (for example) – to what extent are we original in any real sense?</div>
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<br />What we do have in common with Sam Bell (and Chesney Hawkes as is alarm clock reminds him on a daily basis) is the assumption we are unique, we are ‘the one and only’, and we are the centre of our own universe. As a consequence of this, we rebel against the sense that we are simply cogs in someone else’s machine, we don’t want to be ‘told what to do’ (as one version of Sam tells the other), we want autonomy. And whilst we don’t want to be owned, we still want to belong, and we want to determine the nature of that belonging ourselves. Without that, the film suggests the lengths we all go to realise our own being, and our own ending. From sabotaging our world, to opening up the cracks and vacancies in any systems of power, even to going off reservation in order to find new life and new forms of communication. <br /><br />‘Moon’ therefore tells us something about alienation and how we as humans treat each other and other living things. What do we learn from different phases, ages, or reboots? What will the new Sam Bell learn from his past? Does society simply reboot itself without learning lessons of the past? If we displace ourselves to the Moon, will we continue with the same power relations, exploitation and alienation as we currently do on Earth? The film prompts us to ask these questions as Sam arrives back on Earth. Will he be reduced to ‘either a wacko or an illegal immigrant’ or simply as Eliot would suggest, another (rather than an Other) living being seeking to persist in its own being? For me, the film suggests the hopeful conclusion that we will always rebel against corporations and institutions that may seek to overly determination our autonomy, but also with a worrying sense that we all easily reboot and forget that clones, or any type of non-orthodox being, is somehow less than us because it is not-us.</div>
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<![endif]-->Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-26487425721314220392013-10-25T05:16:00.000-07:002013-10-25T05:55:15.682-07:00Moon on November 7th at Cardiff University<div style="text-align: justify;">
Film: Moon <br />
Date: Thursday 7th November<br />
Time: 6pm (screening) 7.45pm (talks and discussion)<br />
Venue: Hadyn Ellis Building, Maindy Road.<br />
Tickets can be booked by e-mailing<a href="mailto:publicbookings@cf.ac.uk" target="_blank"> publicbookings@cf.ac.uk</a> or by phoning 02920 876936<br />
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In addition to Like Father, Like Son at Chapter Arts centre we will be screening the film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/" target="_blank">Moon</a> followed by academic talks and a discussion at Cardiff University's new <a href="http://medicine.cf.ac.uk/place/hadyn-ellis-building-cathays-park/" target="_blank"><b>Hadyn Ellis Building</b></a> on Maindy Road on Thursday November 7th. The forms part of the launch of the University's new flagship Hadyn Ellis Building which marks the beginning of the development of the new Maindy Road site. </div>
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Moon is a fascinating film about Sam Bell, a man stationed on the moon harvesting helium-3, the answer to the world's energy crisis. During his three year stint in space, communication with earth is cut-off leaving him only infrequent video messages from his wife, and GERTY, an AI robot, as his only companion. Two weeks before he returns home, Sam crashes his lunar vehicle while attending to a jammed harvester and, when he wakes up without any memory of the crash and GERTY unwilling to let him leave the station, Sam must find out the truth of what happened.<br />
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Following the screening, a panel of experts will offer short responses to the film from their expertise, exploring themes such as robots as surrogate mothers, tissue engineering, living in space,and hallucinations and memory, followed by a lively open discussion with the audience. Wine and snacks will be provided and everyone attending is welcome to take part in the debate. Tickets to the screening and discussion are <b>free</b>, but places must be booked<b> </b>by e-mailing <a href="mailto:publicbookings@cf.ac.uk">publicbookings@cf.ac.uk</a>.</div>
<b>Please also note that the film is only suitable for persons of 15 years and over</b>.<br />
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<br />Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3513674784765302680.post-6118944480224036792013-10-23T09:08:00.001-07:002013-10-23T09:08:35.149-07:00Like Father, Like Son speakers confirmed - 12th NovemberSpeakers at our next event - Like Father, Like Son - at Chapter Arts Centre on Tuesday November 12th have been confirmed.<br />
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They are:<br />
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<a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/sonms/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/featherstone-katie-overview_new.html" target="_blank">Katie Featherstone</a> on Kinship, Family and Inheritance<br />
<a href="http://medicine.cf.ac.uk/person/dr-ian-m-frayling/" target="_blank">Ian Frayling </a>on DNA testing<br />
<a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/sohcs/contactsandpeople/q-z/sakellariou-dikaios-mr-overview_new.html" target="_blank">Dikaios Sakellariou</a> on Japanese Culture<br />
<a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/G-H/professor-karen-henwood-overview.html" target="_blank">Karen Henwood</a> on Fatherhood<br />
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The usual refreshments will be provided.<br />
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Tickets for the film are £4.40. Tickets to the sciSCREEN discussion
event are free but must be booked over the phone (02920 304400) or from
the ticket desk in <a href="http://www.chapter.org/" target="_blank">Chapter</a>. This event will be held in the usual Media Point room which is up the stairs near Chapter’s main entrance. Film begins at 6pm and discussion around 8pm.<br />
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This sciSCREEN event is sponsored by the <a href="http://www.walesgenepark.cardiff.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Wales Gene Park</a>Jamie Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935644690373186688noreply@blogger.com0