Effects of the dominant in Secret Window.

This paper seeks to identify and examine 'problematic' aesthetic strategies in David Koepp's Secret Window (2004). Arguing that the film fits into a specific 'puzzle film' category favouring self-deceiving protagonists and surprise twists, the paper seeks to account for the negative critical reaction accrued by the film's denouement. Most centrally, I invoke the Russian Formalist's concept of the 'dominant' in order to suggest how Secret Window subordinates textual elements to the film's narrative revelation. It is this prioritising of the main plot twist that accounts for many of the film's dramaturgically contentious tactics. The paper demonstrates the means by which Secret Window cuts against the grain of Hollywood storytelling norms; it suggests that the film manipulates character engagement in a way that exceeds the puzzle film's traditional reshuffling of sympathies; and it indicates how the film deploys generic convention and allusion to engender a highly self-conscious and repressive narration. These arguments aim to show that the film displays bold and sophisticated aesthetic strategies. More broadly, the paper argues that by analysing problematic examples of a film genre, we can usefully disclose the aesthetic principles that underpin the genre's more successful films

Reappraising Always

Steven Spielberg's 1989 film Always represents one of the director's few critical and commercial disappointments. This paper examines the extent to which the film's failures are attributable to its formal, stylistic, and narrative features. The paper offers a defence of Always against specific reproaches. It also pursues more positive aims. Following Warren Buckland, the paper pinpoints organic unity as Spielberg's primary compositional principle; it tracks the development of motifs, tactics of foreshadowing, and other internal norms to demonstrate the formation of a structurally unified text; and it posits contrasts with a pertinent antecedent, A Guy Named Joe (Victor Fleming, 1943), so as to set Spielberg's artistic achievements in relief. The paper goes on to isolate some putatively troublesome manoeuvres at the film's internal level. Certain of these problematic aspects, I argue, force us to recognise that important narrative effects can be yielded by modulated deviations from organic unity. The collective aim of these arguments is to suggest that Always is apt for critical revaluation. Over this hovers a secondary objective. The paper seeks to disclaim two interrelated faults ascribed to Spielberg: a characteristic supplanting of narrative coherence by spectacle; and an indifference to subtlety and sophistication

Evidencing domestic violence, including behaviour that falls under the new offence of 'controlling or coercive behaviour'

IN 2015 an offence of 'controlling or coercive behaviour' was introduced under the Serious Crime Act, criminalising for the first time the non-physical abuse which so often occurs in the domestic context. This new offence implicitly recognises the psychological and emotional harm which can result from an ongoing pattern of behaviour, and the need to consider the controlling or coercive nature of this behaviour in the context of the power dynamics of the relationship in question. Unique evidential difficulties are raised by this offence, in part because of the ways in which gendered expectations can disguise the controlling and coercive nature of certain behaviours. At the same time, to increase the number of prosecutions for domestic violence offences, including under the new offence, acknowledgment of the ongoing trauma often experienced by victims, and the ways in which this may hinder their ability to safely and effectively participate in the criminal justice process, is required. We will outline recommendations to enable this participation, whilst also asserting the need for creative prosecution methods which allow these type of cases to be prosecuted without being solely reliant upon the victim's oral testimony in court

Towards Language Documentation 2.0: Imagining a crowdsourcing revolution

Language documentation theory has provided critical insights into the nature of a lasting, multipurpose record of a language (Himmelmann 1998, 2012). Much of the literature has focused on the desirable properties of a comprehensive ‘best record’ of language (Woodbury, 2003). Language documentation leans heavily upon traditional linguistic fieldwork methods such as elicitation and detailed transcription performed in the field. These activities are dependent on highly trained linguists as facilitators for every documentary event. The resulting lack of ‘scalability’ in these methods threatens our ability to meet even modest documentary goals (Liberman, 2006). Responding to productivity concerns, Reiman (2010) introduced Basic Oral Language Documentation. The BOLD method utilises phrase-aligned ‘oral transcriptions’ with the aim of deferring transcription until after fieldwork. BOLD may be enacted by participants with limited training thereby side stepping a major impediment to scaling up documentary activity. The Aikuma smartphone application implements an interactive variant of the BOLD method (Bird & Hanke, 2013; Bird et al., 2014). While still under development, field trials with Aikuma have shown that participants have been able to autonomously collect spoken narratives with respeaking and translation. The assumption to date is that these tools would be deployed by a field linguist to complement an evolving linguistic description. Yet the ever expanding footprint of the World Wide Web means that we would be foolish to believe that field linguists will be the sole facilitators of documentary activities. As the web reaches new frontiers today, it is the ‘Web 2.0’ replete with social networks that communities will first encounter. Where there’s the will to maintain their language, communities are increasingly finding that they have the tools to do so, such the Mapuche people of Chile and their use of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to promote and preserve their linguistic heritage (Campbell & Huck, 2013). This raises the question as to whether purpose built linguistic crowdsourcing tools can and should interact with the Web 2.0 ecosystem. We also note that the social web has evolved solutions for other documentary challenges. Nathan (2006) described how 2.0 ‘sharing’ features in the SOAS ELAR archive facilitate stakeholder negotiations to manage the complexities of access and distribution in language documentation. Using examples from recent field trials and urban fieldwork, we demonstrate the potential of participant-driven documentation to produce a scalable corpora of natural language and discuss the trade-offs between fidelity vs. quantity. However the process of developing and using these tools has also heightened our awareness of the potential ramifications of social computing and language documentation. We conclude with a thought experiment based on a proposed ‘linguistic social network’ and the linguist of the future. References Boerger, Brenda. 2011. To boldly go where no one has gone before. Language Documentation & Conservation, 5, pp. 208–233. Campbell, Baird & James Huck. 2013. Social Media as a Tool for Linguistic Maintenance and Preservation among the Mapuche. Proceedings of the 2013 LAGO Graduate Student Conference “Decolonizing the Americas”, Tulane University. Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 1998. Documentary and Descriptive Linguistics. Linguistics, 36, 161–195. Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2012. Linguistic Data Types and the Interface between Language Documentation and Description. Language Documentation & Conservation, 6. 187–207. Liberman, Mark. 2006. The problems of scale in language documentation. Computational Linguistics for Less-Studied Languages workshop, Texas Linguistics Society. Reiman, D. Will. 2010. Basic oral language documentation. Language Documentation & Conservation 4. 254–268. Woodbury, Anthony C. 2003. Defining language documentation. In Peter K. Austin (Ed.), Language Documentation and Description (Vol. 1, pp. 35–51). London: SOAS

Yesterday Once More : Hong Kong-China Coproductions and the Myth of Mainlandization

Since Ackbar Abbas theorized Hong Kong as a space of cultural ‘disappearance’ in the mid-1990s, critics have debated the extent to which local cultural forms have continued to recede, particularly as a corollary of Hong Kong’s increasing subjection to mainlandization. For several critics, the region’s cinema has already vanished from view, only to re-emerge in a brand new, distinctly Sinicized guise – that of ‘post-Hong Kong cinema,’ a mode of predominantly coproduced filmmaking that effaces traditional Hong Kong aesthetics and routines of film practice. So thoroughly has Hong Kong cinema been subsumed to China that its once ‘unique’ and ‘singular’ identity is no longer discernible. The shackles of PRC censorship now stifle free expression; Hong Kong’s classic genres have become obsolete; and the PRC’s vogue for ‘main melody’ films and the dapian (‘big film’) has straitened Hong Kong cinema’s range of storytelling options. Today, critics contend, Hong Kong filmmakers are severely constrained by Mainland bureaucracy and the exigencies of the China market. This article seeks to challenge these assumptions, contesting a set of apparent truisms concerning Mainland censorship, Hong Kong-China coproductions, and the dissipation or disappearance of Hong Kong’s local cinema and identity. The theory of mainlandization, I submit, denies the durability of Hong Kong’s standardized craft practices; its aesthetic traditions; and the facile ingenuity of its filmmakers