'Live' anniversary event TV as public service ephemera:Doctor Who, Casualty, Match of the Day, EastEnders and BBC moments of attachment

Considering a range of recent BBC TV programme anniversaries, this article analyses how the BBC has utilised different modes or zones of ‘liveness’ to promote the value of public service television via ‘event’ TV. Such anniversary events strategically collapse together the ‘hyper-ephemeral’ (having to be there) with the ‘anti-ephemeral’ (commemorating TV history), as longer term audience memories of public service television’s trustworthiness and durability are evoked. Contra scholarly debates which have positioned media anniversaries simply as a matter of (hyper-)commodification, I address Doctor Who’s 50th, Casualty’s 30th, Match of the Day’s 50th and EastEnders’ 30th anniversary as each shaping a sense of remembered ‘public service ephemera’. Through this process, audiences’ recollections of past programmes, and their integration with memories of everyday life, are articulated with emotional attachments to the BBC, thus making an affective case for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s cultural legitimation. Very different types of TV that we might not usually think to analyse side-by-side – flagship, returning, and soap dramas, along with sports coverage – can all work coherently as programme brands to defend the BBC’s cultural standing, without surrendering to what’s been termed ‘BBC nostalgia’, and while simultaneously bidding to colonise second-screen ‘digital flows’ circulating around TV premieres.</jats:p

'It's all my interpretation': reading Spike through the subcultural celebrity of James Marsters

This article considers how fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel interpret the character of Spike through meanings attached to actor James Marsters as a 'subcultural celebrity'. Work on TV’s celebrity actors has stressed how character and actor can become semiotically blurred. Rather than approaching this blurring of textual and extra-textual connotations as an essential property of television celebrity, we analyse how Marsters displays situated agency by discursively constructing 'himself' in publicity materials as 'like Spike'. We then consider Marsters as a reader of Buffy. As a subcultural celebrity, we argue that Marsters is positioned between media producers and media fans, and therefore is able to offer up privileged interpretations of 'his' character, Spike, while simultaneously observing the symbolic power of producers’ preferred readings. Marsters supports certain fan readings of Spike, acting as a textual poacher who nevertheless is 'inside' the texts of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel

Fandom’s paratextual memory : remembering, reconstructing, and repatriating “lost” Doctor Who

In this article, we aim to bring fan studies and memory studies into greater dialogue through the concept of “paratextual memory”. For media fans, paratextual memory facilitates a sense of “having been there” at key moments of T.V. broadcasting, sustaining fan authenticity and status. We focus on B.B.C. T.V.’s science fiction series Doctor Who (1963–) as a case study due to the fact that the program's “missing episodes” (wiped by the B.B.C.) have been reconstructed by fans through “remixes” of off-air sound recordings and “tele-snap” visual records. Unusually, then, fans’ paratextual memory and related forms of productivity have taken the place of archived television. We go on to address how fan-archivists and entrepreneurs have sought to recover and repatriate “lost” Doctor Who. Processes of fannish paratextual memory typically draw on heritage discourses to valorize “classic” Doctor Who, and fans’ paratextual memory has thus fed into the B.B.C.’s recommodification of “archive” T.V

LEGO Dimensions conoce a Doctor Who: Transmarca y Nuevas Dimensiones de la Narrativa Transmedia?

This article explores how the ‘toys-to-life’ videogame LEGO Dimensions (WarnerBros. Interactive Entertainment/Traveller’s Tales/The LEGO Group, 2015) mashes upmany different franchise storyworlds and brands. Specifically, I focus on how DoctorWho (BBC, 1963—), the British TV science fiction series, is licensed and transmediallyengaged with in Dimensions. I consider how the transbranding of LEGO Dimensionsappears to co-opt children’s “transgressive play” (Nørgård and Toft-Nielsen, 2014)by combining intellectual properties, but actually continues to operate according tologics of shared corporate ownership where many of the combined storyworlds areultimately owned by Time Warner (placing Dimensions in competition with Disney’sown ‘toys-to-life’ game). Considering what value might accrue to the brand of DoctorWho by participating in LEGO Dimensions, I identify this as a particular example of“What If?” transmedia (Mittell, 2015), arguing that LEGO Dimensions’ Doctor Whonevertheless fluctuates in terms of its brand (in)authenticity. The Starter Pack remainscloser to LEGO Games’/Traveller’s Tales’ established format, subordinating Who, whilstthe separate Level Pack engages more precisely with Doctor Who’s history, albeit stilldisplaying some notable divergences from the TV series (Booth, 2015). Although LEGODimensions challenges influential theories of transmedia storytelling (Jenkins, 2006;Aldred, 2014), its transbranding and child/adult targeting accord with established approachesto transmedia licensing (Santo 2015) and fan-consumer socialization (Kinder1991).Este artículo explora la forma en que el videojuego que anima los tradicionales juguetes LEGO, LEGO Dimensions (Warner Bross Interactive Entertainment/Traveller’s Tale/The LEGO Group, 2015) mezcla distintos mundos de ficción y marcas de franquicia. Me centro particularmente en cómo Doctor Who (BBC, 1936—), la serie británica de ciencia ficción, consigue intervenir transmedialmente en el propio Dimensions. Presto atención al modo en que mediante la combinación de distintas propiedades intelectuales, el carácter transmarca de LEGO Dimensions parece apropiarse de cierta “dimensión transgresora del juego” infantil (Nørgård y Toft-Nielsen, 2014), aunque en realidad continúa funcionando desde una lógica de propiedad corporativa compartida en la que muchos de los mundos de ficción combinados son en esencia propiedad de Time Warner (colocando el Dimensions en relación de competitividad con los videojuegos de juguetes animados propiedad de Disney). En cuanto al valor que la marca Doctor Who puede adquirir con su intervención en LEGO Dimesions, lo identifico como un ejemplo particular de un “¿Qué pasaría si...?” transmedial (Mittell, 2015), arguyendo que en todo caso el Doctor Who de LEGO Dimensions fluctúa en términos de la (no)autenticidad de su marca. Mientras el tratamiento de Who en el Pack de Inicio es bastante fiel al formato establecido en los juegos de LEGO/Traveller’s Tales, en el Pack de Nivel, vendido a parte, se integra de forma más precisa la historia de Doctor Who, si bien aquí manifiesta destacables diferencias con la serie de televisión (Booth, 2015). Aunque LEGO Dimensions desafía teorías dominantes sobre narrativa transmedia (Jenkins, 2006; Aldred, 2014), su carácter transmarca y su público potencial infantil/adulto coinciden con los propuestos por las aproximaciones establecidas sobre la concesión transmedia (Santo, 2015) y sobre la socialización del consumidor-fan (Kinder, 1991)

O fandom como objeto e os objetos do fandom

Matt Hills é Professor de Film &amp; TV Studies na Aberystwyth University, no País de Gales. Ele possui um mestrado pela Goldsmiths, University of London, e um doutorado pela University of Sussex. Fã autodeclarado da série britânica Doctor Who, Hills tem escrito sobre fãs e fandom desde o início de sua carreira, ao lado de trabalhos sobre audiências de mídia, cinema e TV cult, qualidade da televisão e cultura digital. Seu livro Fan Cultures (2002) está entre as mais reconhecidas contribuições aos estudos de fã. Nessa entrevista, Matt Hills fala sobre os desafios teóricos e empíricos na definição e estudos dos fãs, a complexidade do termo e os tipos de envolvimento e comportamento no fandom online e off-line.Matt Hills is a Professor of Film &amp; TV Studies at Aberystwyth University, in Wales, and before that he was a Reader at Cardiff University. He holds a Master’s from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a PhD from the University of Sussex. Self-proclaimed fan of the British series Doctor Who, Hills has been writing about fans and fandom since his early career, especially about Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Sherlock more recently, alongside pieces on media audiences, cult film and TV, quality television and digital culture. His book Fan Cultures (2002) is among the most well known contributions to fan studies. Matt Hills spoke about the theoretical and empirical challenges in defining and studying fans, the complexity of the term, and the types of engagement and behavior of fandom online and offline

The New Role of Business in Global Education: How Companies Can Create Shared Value by Improving Education While Driving Shareholder Returns

This paper articulates the case for a renewed role for business in global education through the lens of shared value. It is intended to help business leaders and their partners seize opportunities to create economic value while addressing unmet needs in education at scale. The concepts we describe apply across industries and to developed and emerging economies alike, although their implementation will naturally differ based on contex

Digital afx: digital dressing and affective shifts in Sin City and 300

In Sin City (Robert Rodriguez, 2005) and 300 (Zack Snyder, 2006) extensive post-production work has created stylised colour palettes, manipulated areas of the image, and added or subtracted elements. Framing a discussion around the terms ‘affect’ and ‘emotion’, this paper argues that the digital technologies used in Sin City and 300 modify conventional interactions between representational and aesthetic dimensions. Brian Massumi suggests affective imagery can operate through two modes of engagement. One mode is embedded in a meaning system, linked to a speci?c emotion. The second is understood as an intensi?cation whereby a viewer reacts but that reaction is not yet gathered into an alignment with meaning. The term ‘digital afx’ is used to describe manipulations that produce imagery allowing these two modes of engagement to coexist. Digital afx are present when two competing aesthetic strategies remain equally visible within sequences of images. As a consequence the afx mingle with and shift the content of representation

Human cloning in film: horror, ambivalence, hope

Fictional filmic representations of human cloning have shifted in relation to the 1997 announcement of the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep, and since therapeutic human cloning became a scientific practice in the early twentieth century. The operation and detail of these shifts can be seen through an analysis of the films The Island (2005) and Aeon Flux (2005). These films provide a site for the examination of how these changes in human cloning from fiction to practice, and from horror to hope, have been represented and imagined, and how these distinctions have operated visually in fiction, and in relation to genre

The technologies of isolation: apocalypse and self in Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Kairo

In this investigation of the Japanese film Kairo, I contemplate how the horrors present in the film relate to the issue of self, by examining a number of interlocking motifs. These include thematic foci on disease and technology which are more intimately and inwardly focused that the film's conclusion first appears to suggest. The true horror here, I argue, is ontological: centred on the self and its divorcing from the exterior world, especially founded in an increased use of and reliance on communicative technologies. I contend that these concerns are manifested in Kairo by presenting the spread of technology as disease-like, infecting the city and the individuals who are isolated and imprisoned by their urban environment. Finally, I investigate the meanings of the apocalypse, expounding how it may be read as hopeful for the future rather than indicative of failure or doom