A Madison for Outcasts: Dance and Critical Displacements in Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders

In light of Timothy Corrigan’s discussion of the cult film as “adopted child,” Godard’s Band of Outsiders (Bande à part) can be viewed as a film which has transcended its original destiny and opened doors to diverse critical and spectatorial receptions. Drawing upon pulp fiction and the “B movie” genre, Godard’s original intent was to make a mainstream film. But it was precisely the film’s homage to the American mainstream that soon led to its cult status in non-mainstream cinema. Based on a pulp fiction novel by Delores Hitchens, Band of Outsiders celebrates dance and movement from American popular culture and, in particular, American jazz dance as popularized in Europe in the early 1960s. In one sequence, the protagonists break into the Madison, a line dance that quickly moved from the African-American community to the white mainstream through such television shows as American Bandstand and to Europe through the work of such performers/teachers as Harold Nicholas. The freedom of movement within a structured environment, which defines the Madison, recalls the director’s own approach to filmmaking as well as his high regard for the physical dexterity of his actors. Inasmuch as each dancer dances the Madison “solo,” the dance allows individual characters to articulate through movement their mental and emotional states. At the same time, it permits the three protagonists to function as a synchronized group, a “band of outsiders.” The Madison sequence, moreover, presents a microcosm of many of the ideological and aesthetic premises of the Nouvelle Vague and is particularly reflective of Godard’s love of Americana. This dance, itself synonymous with the film, is the sequence that generates the most intricate intertextual references as well as the most divergent critical response. The Madison has thus become the vehicle through which Band of Outsiders has come to stand in for non-mainstream cinema at large.Dans la perspective de Timothy Corrigan, qui définit le film-culte comme un « enfant adopté », Bande à part de Jean-Luc Godard peut être pensé comme un film ayant transcendé sa vocation initiale et ouvert la voie à différentes réceptions critiques et spectatorielles. Attiré par la littérature de gare et les films de série B, Godard avait comme intention première de faire un film grand-public. C’est précisément parce que Bande à part rend hommage au cinéma populaire américain qu’il est devenu un film-culte du cinéma marginal. Adaptation d’un roman de gare de Delores Hitchens, Bande à part rend hommage à la danse populaire américaine, et en particulier à la danse jazz, popularisée en Europe au début des années 1960. Dans une séquence du film, les protagonistes exécutent un Madison, une danse en ligne d’abord populaire au sein de la communauté afro-américaine, mais que les Blancs se sont rapidement accaparé par le truchement d’émissions de télévision comme American Bandstand et, en Europe, grâce au travail d’interprètes/enseignants comme Harold Nicholas. Cette liberté de mouvement au sein d’un environnement structuré, qui est propre au Madison, on la retrouve également dans la démarche de Godard, notamment dans l’importance qu’il accorde à l’agilité physique de ses acteurs. Dans la mesure où chaque personnage de la séquence du Madison danse « en solo », on peut dire que cette danse leur permet d’exprimer leurs émotions et états d’âmes respectifs. Mais le Madison leur permet aussi de s’affirmer en tant que groupe, et de faire en quelque sorte « bande à part ». Par ailleurs, cette séquence offre une synthèse de ce que représente la Nouvelle Vague, tant sur le plan esthétique que sur le plan idéologique, et est particulièrement représentative de la grande estime qu’a Godard pour la culture américaine. En termes de références intertextuelles, la séquence du Madison est la plus chargée du film, et c’est par ailleurs celle qui a suscité les réactions les plus variées chez la critique. Le Madison peut donc être considéré comme le véhicule grâce auquel Bande à part a pu devenir un archétype du cinéma marginal

Interview with Bruce Jacklin

Bruce Jacklin talks about the Alcove Restaurant and Dinner Theaterhttps://digital.kenyon.edu/ps_interviews/1008/thumbnail.jp

The refined transfer, bundle structures and algebraic K-theory

We give new homotopy theoretic criteria for deciding when a fibration with homotopy finite fibers admits a reduction to a fiber bundle with compact topological manifold fibers. The criteria lead to a new and unexpected result about homeomorphism groups of manifolds. A tool used in the proof is a surjective splitting of the assembly map for Waldhausen's functor A(X). We also give concrete examples of fibrations having a reduction to a fiber bundle with compact topological manifold fibers but which fail to admit a compact fiber smoothing. The examples are detected by algebraic K-theory invariants. We consider a refinement of the Becker-Gottlieb transfer. We show that a version of the axioms described by Becker and Schultz uniquely determines the refined transfer for the class of fibrations admitting a reduction to a fiber bundle with compact topological manifold fibers. In an appendix, we sketch a theory of characteristic classes for fibrations. The classes are primary obstructions to finding a compact fiber smoothing.Comment: This version contains mostly minor revision

Strategic HRD: Who drives the agenda and why?

A focus on strategic human resource development (HRD) has been emphasised as a key contributor to ensuring organisational effectiveness and the maximum return from their most important asset, the people in the organisation. It is argued that effective management and innovative approaches to the development of employees will enable organisations to capture and embed knowledge and skills. Organisations that are seeking not only to survive, but to maximise operational effectiveness in an ever-changing environment, need to ensure that at all levels, the HRD strategy is aligned with broader strategic imperatives, and that sufficient emphasis is placed on the HRD function. It is a role of management to ensure that the organisation and its people acquire the competencies and knowledge it needs through education, training and development activities. These training and development activities should deliver high quality outcomes that will sustain the organisation. In a study of employers in regional Queensland and the Northern Territory, the strategic importance placed upon the HRD function, and an indication of who is driving the HRD agenda have been analysed. This paper presents some findings from a pilot study undertaken to gauge initial feedback on these issues, and is the starting point for the development of future research into the HRD practices of organisations operating in regional and remote locations

State-Corporate Crime and the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant

While criminologists have for some time examined state and corporate crime as separate entities, the concept of state-corporate crime highlighting joint government and private corporate action causing criminal harm is a recent area of study with relatively few published case studies (Matthews and Kauzlarich, 2000). This paper focuses on state-corporate crime at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP) in Paducah, Kentucky, and contributes to the study of state-corporate crime in three ways: (1) it adds a new case study to a field in which there are few published accounts, (2) it assesses the utility of Kauzlarich and Kramer’s (1998) integrated theoretical framework of state-corporate crime by applying it to understanding harms at PGDP, and (3) it demonstrates how the state role in state-corporate crime can evolve from that of instigator to facilitator. PGDP is an especially important case study in the field of state-corporate crime because it constitutes a rare instance in which the federal government has both acknowledged and apologized for its role in harms caused to plant workers and the environment