Writing Identity onto the Screen

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Bleeping Deluxe: Staging Self-Censorship and the Limits of Excess @ Gender Studies Forum

Claire Maree will be speaking on her current work that emerges from the “Writing Identity onto the Screen” project at the Gender Studies Forum on August 3, 2017.

“Bleeping Deluxe: Staging Self-Censorship and the Limits of Excess”

The use of ‘bleeps’ is a common trope of censorship in entertainment television that facilitates the image of personalities and comedians speaking candidly. In this presentation, Dr Claire Maree examines the practice of overlaying ‘tennis grunts’ to ‘bleep out’ speech acts performed by queer/queen personality Matsuko Deluxe in the late-night television show Matsuko no heya (Matsuko’s Room).

This staged self-censorship supports Matsuko’s image as a sharp-tongued, honest-speaking and entertaining personality. At the same time, the reflexive bleeps and mouth-overs effectively regiment queer/queen talk and position the style as excessive and already exceeding the limits of respectability. The editing of bleeps and mouth-overs into audiovisual media is one example of the intensive ‘language-labour’ performed in commercial editing and writing.

More details here.

 


Speaking in Subtitles – Tessa Dwyer

Tessa Dwyer, Lecturer in Film and Screen Studies at Monash University, presented her research on fansubbing at last year’s Language and Global Media workshop. In the lead up to Tessa presenting at the Identities in Translation workshop, we asked her to share a little bit about what she’s been working on, which you can read below!

Since attending the 2016 Language and Global Media Workshop and Masterclass, I’ve published my first monograph Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen Translation (EUP, 2017). Based on my PhD research, it considers screen translation beyond the confines of ‘quality’ discourse in order to challenge its secondary status. Instead, I argue that translation has always played a central role in the production, circulation and reception of screen media since the early days of silent film. Hence, I term screen an inherently translational medium. In rethinking the value of screen translation beyond ‘quality’ criteria alone, I also seek to engage with emerging modes of screen engagement and translation practice that are communal, collaborative and/or crowdsourced. The book ends with a new chapter on global TV platform Viki, which provides free, amateur subtitles for streaming video in up to 200 languages. Viki demonstrates the new affordances of online networking in relation to language diversification, harnessing the power of informal or errant (sometimes even error-filled) fan-made translation.

Another project I am working on currently relates directly to the paper I presented at last year’s workshop. I’m writing it up for a special special themed section on ‘Un/Social Cinema: Audience Decorum Revisited’ for Participations that I am editing with Stephen Gaunson. Canvassing a range of participatory audience practices, this themed dossier considers recent shifts to fan behaviour and film exhibition instigated via digital and networking technologies as well as thinking about how un/social audience behaviour changes across different cultures and eras. My article, tentatively titled ‘Leave Your Phone On! Barrage Cinema, Bullet Screens and Hecklevision’ traces links between online video-sharing, SMS texting and fansubbing. In doing so, it navigates across cultures (China, Japan and the US) and explores the increasing prominence of text and language mediation within the ‘writing-image environments’ (Steinberg, 2017) of digital-era convergence culture.

Earlier in the year, I co-convened Screening Melbourne, the inaugural conference presented by the Melbourne Screen Studies Group – and co-presented a workshop on Transnational Screen Traffic that engaged with Melbourne as one node in a network of global screen flows. I also co-edited the Bloomsbury anthology Seeing into Screens: Eye Tracking the Moving Image which includes a number of chapters on subtitling as well as ‘integrated titles’. So, watch out for it in 2018! I also completed my first, collaborative foray into video essay production with Jenny Robinson for a special ‘Eye Tracking’ issue of [In]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies. This was a fun yet arduous process, and a great learning experience that definitely took me out of my comfort zone. Other projects I am developing relate to screen media tourism and fandom, as well as intersections between language, identity and nation on screen via research into the accented voice.

Reference:

Steinberg, Marc (2017). “Converging Contents and Platforms: Niconico Video and Japan’s Media Mix Ecology.” Asian Video Cultures: In the Penumbra of the Global, edited by Joshua Neves and Bhaskar Sarkar. Duke University Press.


Extended Deadline for the Identities in Translation CFP!

We’ve extended the deadline for the call for papers to August 7! If you’re interested in submitting an abstract to present at the Identities in Translation workshop, being held at the University of Melbourne on the 27th of September, please do so here!

Read more about the workshop here!

Any questions, please feel free to email us at: writing-identity@unimelb.edu.au

We hope to see you there!


Call for Papers: Identities in Translation – 2017 Workshop!

After the success of the Language and Global Media workshop, we will be hosting another workshop on the 27th of September called Identities in Translation!

This international workshop brings together leading scholars and graduates researching the intersections of translation and identity; with a specific focus on translation in audiovisual media, and cultural translation practices.

Researchers engaged in translation studies, writing system research, global media research, discourse studies, multi-modal discourse analysis, language and identity studies, gender and queer studies, are invited to present on their current research in relation to the workshop theme of ‘Identities in Translation’.

Invited speakers:

Dr Tessa Dwyer (Monash University)

Dr Jason Jones (Monash University)

To submit a paper to present at this year’s workshop, please click here. Submissions are being accepted right now and they will be accepted until August 18, 2017.

If you have any questions or queries, please contact Claire Maree and the Writing Identity team at: writing-identity@unimelb.edu.au

We hope to see you at what will be another great collaborative workshop!


Discussion Topic: Online Ethics

At the Masterclass and again on the final day of the workshop, we discussed the concepts that were most important to the group as researchers. To keep this discussion going, we would like to use this website as a space to continue sharing these ideas, building upon them and assisting each other where possible.

For the first of these topics, we would like to discuss ethics, particularly online ethics.

Discussions of ethical considerations were a common occurrence throughout the Masterclass and Workshop.

How, as ethical researchers, do we analyse online data?

It is a burgeoning field in research and consequently it is also becoming a more significant issue in ethics. For websites like Facebook, there are obvious connections between a person’s online identity and their offline identity. Comparatively, other websites require only an avatar, but for many avid users, these avatars can have personal significance to the offline identity of the user (Whiteman, 2012).

Dawson (2014) found how easy it is to link data obtained online to its original source, due largely to the use of search engines, demonstrating how difficult it is to keep online sources anonymous. As Dawson goes on to discuss, situations where the researcher is a part of a community and eliciting data makes this particularly problematic.

The method of analysis is also important to consider. Analysing the text rather than the subject entails different ethical considerations. Whiteman (2012) identifies many of the perspectives that can be used to analyse the text and what these mean for how the data should be treated.

Gao and Tao (2016) highlighted many of the other considerations the researcher must undertake while gathering data. As a researcher, there are many questions that must be asked in order to ensure the research conducted is as ethical as possible, for Gao and Tao and online data, this includes, whether or not to obtain informed consent, how to obtain this consent, whether or not to anonymise and how to protect participants (p. 185). As well as these participant-based considerations, researchers must also make sure they consult the terms and conditions of the website from which the data is obtained. Some websites have much tighter restrictions on data use and presentation than others, so a researcher should always be well versed and up-to-date on data collection and use for their chosen platform.

What do you think? What are some other considerations that must be taken into account in order to research ethically in online domains?

If you know of any other articles or books of significance for online ethics, please share them!

 

References

Dawson, P. (2014). Our anonymous online research participants are not always anonymous: Is this a problem? British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(3), 428–437.

Gao, X., & Tao, J. (2016). Ethical challenges in conducting text-based online applied linguistics research. In P. I. De Costa (Ed.), Ethics in Applied Linguistics Research (pp. 181–194). New York & London: Routledge.

Whiteman, N. (2012). Undoing ethics: Rethinking practice in online research. New York: Springer.


Reflecting on the Workshop

Thank you to everyone who attended the Language and Global Media Workshop and Masterclass. We had a very interesting week, with presenters from gender studies, queer studies, linguistics, media studies and more!

We look forward to future collaborations and publications from the participants who attended.

For more information about the workshop and Masterclass, as well as the outcomes, check back to this website soon.

Keep an eye on this space for exciting things to come in 2017!



Masterclass and Workshop schedules

Thanks to all of those who have registered for Language and Global Media International Workshop & Masterclass.

Remember, that as catering is provided over the course of the Masterclass and Workshop, we ask colleagues register for attendance by emailing Writing-identity “at” unimelb.ed.au

An outline of the basic schedule for the Masterclass is now up on the Writing Identity Blog. (Click on the Menu sidebar to view).

The full schedule for the Language and Global Media International Workshop is now available. (Click on the Menu sidebar to view).

I am looking forward to welcoming you all to the Workshop, and building further collaborative networks.

Claire Maree

(Organiser, Language and Global Media International Workshop and Masterclass)



Last Chance to Register!

Registrations to attend the Masterclass or workshop close on the 28th of October, so make sure you get your application in!

The Masterclass will be taking place on November 15 and the workshop will follow on the 16th-18th of November.

For information about registering to attend the workshop, click here.

For information about registering to attend the Masterclass, click here.


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