22 research outputs found
The Rhetoric of Disfigurement in First World War Britain
During the First World War, the horror of facial mutilation was evoked in journalism, poems, memoirs and fiction; but in Britain it was almost never represented visually outside the professional contexts of clinical medicine and medical history. This article asks why, and offers an account of British visual culture in which visual anxiety and aversion are of central importance. By comparing the rhetoric of disfigurement to the parallel treatment of amputees, an asymmetrical picture emerges in which the âworst loss of allââthe loss of one's faceâis perceived as a loss of humanity. The only hope was surgery or, if that failed, prosthetic repair: innovations that were often wildly exaggerated in the popular press. Francis Derwent Wood was one of several sculptors whose technical skill and artistic âwizardryâ played a part in the improvised reconstruction of identity and humanity
Face Value: The Rhetoric of Facial Disfigurement in American Film and Popular Culture, 1917-27
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record.The return of facially disfigured men from the trenches of World War One occasioned a muted public reaction in the US. However, this article will show that burgeoning discourses concerning plastic surgery in the US also generated a significant reaction in the popular press, and that these were reflected, too, in several feature films dealing with facial surgery on disfigured veterans. Though several of these films depicted miraculous transformations occasioned by the surgeons, Robert Floreyâs 1927 film, Face Value, focused on an American veteran with facial scarring that could not be repaired. The article will argue that this film drew strongly upon the increasingly prominent public presence of the gueules cassĂ©es in the US during 1926 and 1927. Depicting gueules cassĂ©es and their facial injuries prominently in several scenes, the film brought to attention difficult questions concerning the futures of such men, which the US media had hitherto rarely addressed
Ocular desires : sight and embodiment in the middle ages
University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.NO FULL TEXT AVAILABLE. Access is restricted indefinitely
Sharing music and culture through singing in Australia
This article discusses the notion of sharing music and culture as an effective platform to celebrate diversity in Melbourne, Australia. My research project ‘Celebrating Music Making and Finding Meaning’ investigates and illustrates a context of diversity, one that promotes respect in a multicultural society sharing music and culture of a minority group. In 2007, I interviewed members of the South African choir in Melbourne; here I report on some data regarding why members sing in the choir, what are their understandings of a so-called South African identity and what they would like to share with the wider Australian community. I present some theoretical perspectives focusing on the notion of cultural and musical identity within a multicultural society. Such findings may have similar implications for other multicultural educational settings exploring the possibilities of valuing cultural diversity and making music across ages through a choir where difference can be shared and celebrated.<br /
Medical archives and digital culture
When BioShock was released in August 2007, reviewers praised the moral complexities of the narrative and the gameâs dystopian vision of what Ayn Rand dubbed the âvirtue of selfishness.â What critics overlooked was the extent to which the disturbingly realistic artwork and musical score relied on found images and sound, including a recording of distressed breathing from a physicianâs website, and digitized First World War medical photographs of soldiers with facial injuries. This article examines the implications of these acts of appropriation from a range of critical perspectives including Susan Sontagâs commentary on the representation of suffering; recent literature on the ethics of computer games; and an online discussion forum in which players of BioShock discuss the moral âgrey areasâ of the game
British dental surgery and the First World War: the treatment of facial and jaw injuries from the battlefield to the home front
âElegantâ Surgery: The Beauty of Clinical Expertise
Reflecting on his life as a neurosurgeon, Henry Marsh describes the experience that set him out on his career: observing an operation on an aneurysm in the brain. âThe operation was elegant, dangerous and full of profound meaning. What could be finer, I thought, than to be a neurosurgeon?â1 Approaching the theme of this collection â beauty in relation to notions of recovery â from my perspective as a clinician, I kept coming back to the word that is, as here, surprisingly in common use by surgeons to refer to technical work that they admire: âeleganceâ. I wondered where it came from, what it means for surgery to be âelegantâ, why the language of aesthetics is used for technical processes. I was also interested in what this word says about the doctor who is described as exercising âelegantâ skills, and about the implications of this descriptor for the relationship between clinician and the patient. There is a coolness about the word âeleganceâ, and I have previously written with others about the idea of âcool intimacyâ in relation to clinical examination.2 Elegance may be important to the surgeon but not necessarily to the patient. For the patient what matters for recovery is that the surgery is effective. I wondered whether, in using this word in relation to surgical procedures, most surgeons were not necessarily thinking of effectiveness but more of a certain knacky skill or ingenious way of doing something