Stage Remains: Theatre Criticism and the Photographic Archive

California’s bail system not only infringes on individual rights, but also exacerbates a cobweb criminal justice system. The In re Humphrey court framed the issue perfectly when it stated that the problem with the bail system stems “from the enduring unwillingness of our society, including the courts, to correct a deformity in our criminal justice system that close observers have long considered a blight on the system.” California sought to rectify this “deformity” of a wealth-based bail system by passing SB 10 (the California Money Bail Reform Act of 2017). This Note addresses the arguments that will likely be raised against SB 10 and provides a response to these challenges. Part I discusses the historical background of monetary bail, the bail reform movement in both the federal and state forums, and the beginning of the current bail reform movement in California. Part II addresses the main legal and policy challenges against SB 10, showing how the greatest threats to SB 10 come from policy challenges, rather than legal challenges. Part III looks at the big picture, discussing the pitfalls of pretrial incarceration and the possibility that SB 10 could create a regime of e-carceration

'Ocho apellidos vascos' and the comedy of minor differences

This article examines the content, contexts, and intertexts of the Spanish romantic comedy Ocho apellidos vascos (Dir. Emilio Martínez-Lázaro, 2014). The film was the Spanish box office smash of 2014, and indeed of all time: within one month of its release it had attracted more spectators than any film screened in Spain except for Avatar. Critics spoke of “a social phenomenon,” trying to account for its huge success with national audiences. That success, the critics understood, had something to do with the ethnicities of the film's two lovers—one Andalusian, the other Basque—and the setting of the film, a post-ETA Basque country. Finally, it was said, Spain was able to laugh at the longest-lasting historical trauma that it had endured in the post–civil war era, and by all accounts Basque audiences laughed along with the Spanish. In this article, we consider the ways in which the film makes use of comic conventions to broach problems of difference and conflict. The conflict in question is one that, until recently, has resolutely resisted comic treatment in Spanish film. However, as we demonstrate, Ocho apellidos vascos has not emerged in a vacuum but is, in fact, in dialogue with comic traditions that run from Berlanga to contemporary Basque television and the current trend of “post-humor” in Spanish and Catalan popular culture, particularly as disseminated on the Internet. If Ocho apellidos vascos has reached and satisfied such a wide audience in Spain, it is because it articulates a key message about regionalist and nationalist identifications in a post-ETA landscape. Drawing on psychoanalytical and other theories of humor and comedy, we show how the film is a careful work of compromise, eliding conflicts and dressing up minor differences as major ones

The polaroid image as photo-object

This article is part of a larger project on the cultural history of Polaroid photography and draws on research done at the Polaroid Corporate archive at Harvard and at the Polaroid company itself. It identifies two cultural practices engendered by Polaroid photography, which, at the point of its extinction, has briefly flared into visibility again. It argues that these practices are mistaken as novel but are in fact rediscoveries of practices that stretch back as many as five decades. The first section identifies Polaroid image-making as a photographic equivalent of what Tom Gunning calls the ‘cinema of attractions’. That is, the emphasis in its use is on the display of photographic technologies rather than the resultant image. Equally, the common practice, in both fine art and vernacular circles, of making composite pictures with Polaroid prints, draws attention from image content and redirects it to the photo as object

A comparison of different Malaise trap types

Recent reports on insect decline have highlighted the need for long-term data on insect communities towards identifying their trends and drivers. With the launch of many new insect monitoring schemes to investigate insect communities over large spatial and temporal scales, Malaise traps have become one of the most important tools due to the broad spectrum of species collected and reduced capture bias through passive sampling of insects day and night. However, Malaise traps can vary in size, shape, and colour, and it is unknown how these differences affect biomass, species richness, and composition of trap catch, making it difficult to compare results between studies. We compared five Malaise trap types (three variations of the Townes and two variations of the Bartak Malaise trap) to determine their effects on biomass and species richness as identified by metabarcoding. Insect biomass varied by 20%–55%, not strictly following trap size but varying with trap type. Total species richness was 20%–38% higher in the three Townes trap models compared to the Bartak traps. Bartak traps captured lower richness of highly mobile taxa but increased richness of ground-dwelling taxa. The white roofed Townes trap captured a higher richness of pollinators. We find that biomass, total richness, and taxa group specific richness are all sensitive to Malaise trap type. Trap type should be carefully considered and aligned to match monitoring and research questions. Additionally, our estimates of trap type effects can be used to adjust results to facilitate comparisons across studies