Brendan O'Neill

Week 12: Brendan O’Neill

Can reality tv still be thought of as a genre given the high level of hybridity that exists?

The massive amount of hybridity that currently exists within reality tv makes it very difficult to define as a genre, bringing the question of whether reality tv can even still be considered a genre.

The definition of reality tv according to Oxford dictionary are “Television programmes in which ordinary people are continuously filmed, designed to be entertaining rather than informative.” Immediately this is very broad, if the only requirement for a show to be considered reality tv is that it is designed as entertainment, then that would incorporate a massive amount of media.

The problem however, is that many of the hybrid and niche shows do not fit into any other genre asides from reality tv. According to Wood (2004) the sense of realism that reality tv makes as a defining genre trait is also shared by most if not all media in one form or another, and although this is true, the issue is that this is not a problem that is exclusive to reality tv.

There are a number of examples when it comes to genres that have highly specific but popular sub genres. Genres like crime and fantasy have giant lists of sub genres some you can likely name off the top of your head, while broad genres like comedy and drama are often crossed with other genres which results in new ones.

As the broad appeal of reality tv increases, so will the issues of hybridity, especially as new niche concepts are brought into the genre, rather than rejecting reality tv’s status as a genre, perhaps it should be accepted that it has the potential to be a broad and large spread genre like fantasy or drama. The answer is that yes, reality tv can still be a genre.

Wood, B. (2004). A World in Retreat: The Reconfiguration of Hybridity in 20th-Century New Zealand Television. Media, Culture & Society, 45-62.

Oxford English Dictionary, (1884). Oxford

Week 11: Brendan O’Neill

How real is reality tv?

Discounting a significant amount of asterixis, you could say that reality tv is real. Ultimately though, the reality that gets presented to the audience has been through several layers of artificiality that result in a highly questionable product in terms of authenticity. People are interested in watching conflict, and people find conflict to be far more interesting when it is real, reality tv then seems like the perfect storm of real conflicts and drama that is uncomplicated and easy to understand and therefore consume. The way in which this reality is brought to the screen is what ultimately makes reality tv unreal. According to Hill (2005), “reality TV Is a range of popular factual programming”, the term factual implies that there are no scripts, no second takes, and only a small amount of editing, these are claims that many reality tv shows make that we are going to look into.

The first suspicious claim is that reality tv only has a small amount of editing. Reality tv has turned manipulation of reality through editing into an artform, there are a number of ways that editing is used to present a false reality to the audience. A common convention of reality tv is the confession cam, where a contestant stares at a camera and talks about their feelings or opinions. The editors will only pick the quotes from the contestants that leave the strongest impression or may be the most controversial statement. Editors will go as far as mixing up different things the contestants say to form sentences that the contestant never said. Editors also pick scenes that will highlight the relationships of contestants in however way they want that relationship to be seen by the audience. Editing doesn’t necessarily create a lie, but sometimes it makes the truth more apparent then it should be or less nuanced than it really is.

The claim that there are no scripts may be true, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t staged. Although not all events are staged, it’s exceedingly difficult to believe that several vitally important things happen to these people in the span of a week, and the no second take claim is the one that is most false, even compared to the low editing claim.

The use of editing and staged incidents in reality tv does hurt its authenticity considerably, but what makes RT unreal in my opinion is how it is set up, and what I mean by that is the contestants themselves. Reality tv casting is one of the most calculated processes in any entertainment medium. The contestants are picked to fit specific character archetypes, and are picked as antithetical counterparts to other contestants. These contestants are also incentivised to act in a disagreeable or extreme matter. Love or hate, if the audience feels strongly about you there is an incentive for the showrunners to keep you on longer, and since there is usually some form of reward for ‘winning’ the show, that is often the most important thing to the contestant.

To conclude the very premise of reality tv is often false and reality tv is almost never entirely real.

Kilborn, R. (1994). How real can you get?: Recent developments in ‘reality’ television. European Journal of Communication 9.

DOI: 10.1177/0267323194009004003

Week 10: Brendan O’Neill

What distinctions are there between alternate history, postmodern alternate history and uchronie genres?

Originally pegged as being a piece of the alternative history genre, the true identity of Phillip K. Dick’s 1962 novel The man in the high castle has been disputed, and several alternatives have been offered.

Alternative history has its place as a subgenre that has applications in both literary and historical fiction, but its true home seems to be as a subgenre of Science Fiction. Science fiction is a genre that speculates on futuristic and scientific concepts, like space travel, time travel, and parallel universes. Alternative history belongs in this genre because they are both speculative in nature. Alternative history has been expanded upon further, with texts being classified into several distinctive types of genres.

The first genre is alternative history. Alternative history presents the viewer with a version of the real world that is substantially or slightly different because of one significant event in world history that happened differently from reality. In pure alternative history the cause, or the event that plays out differently, leads to a singular line of effect. The implications then are that all of the effects that play out within the alternative history text, are all directly connected to the same cause.

Postmodern alternative history has a more complex suggestion. That even after the significantly altered event has transpired, the different occurrences after the event are still only one of many possible occurrences (Mountfort 2020.) Because of this distinction, the revelation of alternative timelines within the world of the text, postmodern alternative history becomes much more deserving as a sub genre of science fiction.

Uchronie is the French equivalent of alternative history but is far more similar to postmodern alternative history. A large influencing presence from the I Ching or book of changes, in texts such as The man in the High Castle offers different solutions and outcomes to determine character action and outcome within the book (Mountfort, 2016). The usage of something like the I Ching implies that there is a sense of chance within the outcome, and that alternative possibilities exist in different realities, without a change in material circumstances, only in a metaphorical dice roll with different results.

The distinctions between the genres of alternate history, postmodern alternate history, and Uchronie are based in the layers of complexity offered in regards to ideas such as cause and effect, alternative universes, and chance. The complex nature of The man in the high castle is what makes classifying it a surprisingly complex task.

Mountfort, P. (2016). The I Ching and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. SF-TH Inc.

Mountfort, P. (2020). Week 10: The Man in the High Castle, uchronie and the I Ching. PowerPoint Part 1 and 2

Week 9: Brendan O’Neill

According to Mountfort et al. (2018), what are the three main genres of cosphotography, and how did they historically develop?

Cosphotography is a category of photography based around the photographs of cosplayers. These photos often exist as a result of the work of the cosplayer to create the cosplay in addition to the efforts of the photographer, making it an interesting form of photography where the subject matter is more credited than the photographer for the final result. According to Mountfort et al. (2018), There are three main genres of cosphotography.

The first genre of cosphotography is the runway style of cosphotography. The runway style is meant to replicate the way that mainstream fashion culture functions at the professional level. Like mainstream fashions shows this genre of cosphotography are typically held on a catwalk or stage. This genre is unique because the quality of the costume is usually the more significant factor, taking precedent over the cosplayers ability to accurately enact their character. In addition to this the stageshow format of this genre also limits the extent to which the cosplayer can represent their chosen character. Being limited to music choice and body language.

The second genre of cosphotography is studio style cosphotography. Studio style is often impromptu or organised shortly beforehand. Studio style comes as the result of an agreement between the photographer and the cosplayer. The photographer often either wants to take the photo out of admiration for the character being cosplayed, or the quality of the cosplay itself, and the cosplayer will cooperate as an expectation of the results of cosplaying at a convention and because the impromptu photo request is a form of compliment.

The final genre of cosphotography is hallway shots. Where the photographer photographs the cosplayer in the middle of their ‘performance’ within the improvised cosplay space, and then distributes the content through social media. Unlike the other genres, this genre doesn’t necessarily require the knowing cooperation of the cosplayer.

Mountfort, P, Peirson-Smith, A, & Geczy, A. (2018). Planet cosplay: Costume play, identity and global fandom. Intellect Books.

Week 8: Brendan O’Neill

What does the terms détournement mean and how is it applicable to cosplay?

Détournement in French means ‘rerouting’ or ‘hijacking’ but can be defined as a variation on a previous work that in some way contradicts or critiques the meaning of the original work. When someone dons their cosplay of their chosen character, they are, without the consent of whoever or whatever owns the original material, given the power to represent that character in any way they desire towards an audience, usually people at conventions. Through this cosplayers can ‘hijack’ the character’s presentation for a number of different results.

The most common and obvious application of Détournement in cosplay is for comedic purposes, when a cosplayer hijacks the representation of a fictional character, and are surrounded by conventiongoers and cosplayers that have an inside understanding of that fictional character, it creates a rare opportunity for humour. Due to popularity and the simplicity of design, the most common cosplays at your average convention are going to be Spiderman and Deadpool. In the in text-cannon, the two characters share a comical dynamic of the funny guy and the straitman, but in the context of cosplay the non-cannon dynamic which is created by cosplayers can be changed in the way in which both characters are in on the chaos, as well other forms of the relationship in a way that extends that comedic dynamic past the limitations of the in text-cannon.

The next application of Détournement in cosplay is as a means to critique. The manner in which a cosplayer can accurately represent the character they are hijacking are based around their own limitations. Cosplayers have differences in height, weight, physique, and gender that can potentially limit their ability to replicate their chosen character (Mountfort, 2018). This is an inadvertent critique on the often unrealistic appearances that many fictional characters present.

The final application of Détournement is one that is limited mostly to video game cosplay. In a huge majority of existing video games there exists an unspoken conflict between the canonical game and player cannon. What I mean by this is the canonical way in which a character would interact with their world, versus how a player uses that same character to interact with the world in a non-canonical way. Michael De Santa from Grand Theft Auto 5’s main goal is to retire peacefully, yet the player is enabled through mechanics to make Michael go on an unwarranted destructive rampage. The conflict between game-cannon and player-cannon, is an issue that many games, especially one that attempt to be immersive and story driven suffer from, but in the non-cannon world of cosplay, the tides turn completely. Now that the player has hijacked the character and brought that character to a new world through cosplay, player-cannon is now free to take over.

Mountfort, P, Peirson-Smith, A, & Geczy, A. (2018). Planet cosplay: Costume play, identity and global fandom. Intellect Books.

Week 7: Brendan O’Neill

King (2010) describes Horror as being defined through three basic elements. Explain, using references, what these three elements are. Think of a horror story you’ve read/watched/heard that makes use of all three of these elements and show how King’s definition is at play in that narrative.

King (2010) describes Horror as being defined through three basic elements. First is revulsion, things that are gross to look at can cause the consumer to be disturbed by pure disgust. Second is horror, or portrayal of the unbelievable, showing the audience something that simply cannot exist within the context of the story. Finally there’s terror, where the specifics are left up to the audience’s imagination, and therefore it is whatever it is that scares them the most. .

It may be ironic to pick a film that Stephen king has personally expressed his dislike towards, but I think Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is an excellent choice for this post.

There are a few examples of revulsion used in The Shining. The first is the bathroom scene, where Jack Torrence finds a beautiful naked woman in the bathtub and makes out with her. but once he looks in the mirror he sees that she has become bloated and decrepit with massive infected wounds in her flesh. Not only is it a surprise but the woman’s repulsive appearance makes this a good example of what King was referring to. Another example is the elevator scene, where blood comes flooding out of the elevator, it is disturbing and unnatural.

There is also Horror used in The Shining, The first example is the hallway scene, but first some context. Large portions of the film are spent with the characters mundanely in the hotel, these scenes establish that the Torrence’s are completely alone in the hotel. So when Danny is riding through the hallway on his tricycle, it completely catches the audience off guard when he turns the corner and sees the twin ghosts standing in the middle of the hallway. More than just being a surprise it is also unexplainable, The Torrence’s are alone in the hotel, how are they here? Why? What are they? The mind rushes.

Finally there is terror, which is where I believe the Shining truly… In the documentary Room 237, different interviewees discuss their different interpretations of the shining, and they have theories from The Shining being about The holocaust, to it being about the genocide of American Indians, all the way to someone believing that the entire film is actually a secret message from Kubrick that he helped NASA fake the moon landing. My point is that this film makes people believe that there is more to it than meets the eye. The unknown is everywhere in this film with all kinds of questions that the audience is left to speculate on. Is the mansion a living entity? Is it Haunted? How did Jack get out of the food cellar? And the moment that truly illustrates my point at the very end when Jack appears in a photo of a party at the hotel in 1921. The answer had been sitting right in front of us the whole time, as for what that answer actually means? That’s what makes it terrifying, because they never clue us in.

Neilan, D. (2017, September 13). Stephen King breaks down the different levels of horror. https://www.avclub.com/stephen-king-breaks-down-the-different-levels-of-horror-1806112160

King, S. (2010). Danse macabre. https://blackboard.aut.ac.nz/bbcswebdav/pid-5320793-dt-content-rid-12699647_4/institution/Papers/ENGL602/Publish/Stephen%20King%20Danse%20Macabre%20reading%20%281%29.pdf

Tyler, A. (2020, October 6). The Shining: Every Theory On What Kubrick’s Movie Is Really About. https://screenrant.com/shining-movie-stanley-kubrick-real-meaning-messages-theories/#:~:text=Perhaps%20the%20most%20popular%20theory,then%20fake%20the%20whole%20thing.

Week 6: Brendan O’Neill

What is the philosophy of cosmicism and how is it used to convey a sense of dread in both The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Colour out of Space?

Cosmicism is a philosophy that was developed by H.P. Lovecraft and had a significant presence in his work. The idea of cosmicism is “that there is no recognizable divine presence, such as a god, in the universe, and that humans are particularly insignificant in the larger scheme of intergalactic existence.” That there were eons before us and there will be eons after us, we are just a temporary spec of dust on a planet (C. R. WILEY, 2017). Cosmicism is used very effectively in Lovecraft’s work to convey dread.

The Shadow over Innsmouth was written in 1931 but publicised later due to Lovecraft’s issues he had with it. Despite Lovecraft’s dislike for the story it still conveys dread through cosmicism. The story has many implications that stick with the reader after they have finished reading it. The first is that Robert is able to let go of his humanity. At the end of the story despite knowing he is going to lose his humanity and become a Deep One, he is able to accept this and even look at it optimistically. It implies through cosmicism, that we as human beings are able give up on something that should be a core part of ourselves, that we are so insignificant, that an unknown force can simply take away our self worth and values. The next implication is that the deep ones are able to make humans betray each other, that our bond as a species can be easily broken by the unknown, and make us prioritize them over our own kind. The next implication is that Robert had no control over his life from the very beginning. It was an inevitability that Robert was helpless to stop regardless as to whether he found out about it or not. According to cosmicism, there is no god, and the other humans are more inclined to take the side of the deep ones then robert, meaning there is absolutely nothing that can save Robert from his fate.

This trend of cosmicism in lovecraft’s work continues in The colour out of space. Some of the implications here are similar to The Shadow over innsmouth when cosmicism is considered, such as the humans being powerless against the creature, Gardner is unable to protect his family, his livestock, or himself, and the people who go to the farm are equally powerless and all they can do is run away. The alien was simply able to impose itself on humanity without consequence. The humans being unable to perceive the creature, or not being able to process it without feinting is another returning feature. In this story we can only perceive the alien as being a color, no shape, or size or texture, a color is all our brains can process. The last dread setting idea is that the odds of what happened to the Gardners was a cosmically incalculable number, the meteor could have landed in another state, or country, or planet, or could have ended up in a completely different galaxy. Yet it landed in the gardners farm, the implication is that no matter how unlikely it is in the cosmic expanse, it could still happen to you.

C. R. WILEY. (2017, August 24). Lovecraft’s Cosmicism: What it Is, How It Works, and Why It Fails. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/gloryseed/2017/08/lovecrafts-cosmicism-works-fails/

Lovecraft, H. P. (1927). The color out of space.

Lovecraft, H. P. (1936). The shadow over innsmouth

Week 5: Brendan O’Neill

What is the ‘shōjo’ and how does it often function in anime?

Shojo means ‘young woman’ in english, and within anime refers to series that have young women as the target audience. It is the opposite of the medium’s most popular category, shounen. As the name of the category suggests, shojo anime are designed to be appealing to young women, and many conventions have become a staple of the genre because of this. Despite many Shojo anime being quite similar to each other, the category is quite difficult to define in terms what strictly is and is not shojo, if your manga is published by a shojo magazine, then your manga is a shojo, and that’s really it, outside of that the best way to analyse shojo is to highlight its common tendencies.

Like many age categories the protagonists in shojo anime are often the same as their target audience, in other words the protagonist is a young girl, usually at some point in their time at highschool. Some of the most common traits

Easily the most common and well known genre to fall under shojo is romance. There is so much romance in shojo that some think romance and shojo are the same thing, shojo are often about the protagonist’s romantic endeavors with one or several people. The love interest is a character with a few consistent traits as well, they are often the one to make all the moves in the relationship, and have some form of issue or trauma that the protagonist can fix. The setting is often based in the real world, and is often a school or some form of educational facility. The antagonistic force in your typical shojo isn’t an actual threat to the wellbeing of the protagonist, but rather is some form of romantic rival such as an ex, or fiance.

Although the conventions I’ve highlighted do make up for the brunt of what can be found in the category of shojo, and I don’t believe it to be an unfair representation. I still don’t think it’s a sufficient definition for what shojo is and how it functions in anime. Which is why I will offer some broader appeals of the category.

Rather than being romantic, I think shojo is romanticism. Shojo is visually quite a distinct category, where both male and female characters look feminine, where the backgrounds are often abstract use of shape rather than a set piece, where the aesthetic of the anime is highly dependent on the emotional mood in the story (Jappleng n.d.) I call shojo romanticism because it is emotionally heightened and expressive, at least moreso than other categories. The mix of unique character art, shapes, and color creates what I call the shojo aesthetic, and it’s this aesthetic that brings us the question. Shojo, is a category, but it has also become its own style, one that can be applied to other categories as well. The function of shojo, is to introduce high emotion into a scene without messing with the overall tone of the scene, displaying that a character is angry in a funny scene, without turning that funny scene tense, is one of the primary applications of the aesthetic and conventions that come with shojo anime.

Jappleng. (n.d.). What is Shoujo / shojo and everything you need to know. https://www.jappleng.com/culture/articles/anime-manga/117/what-is-shoujo-shojo-genre-anime 

Week 4: Brendan O’Neill

What was the cultural impact of Akira (1988), and why does it occupy a key place in the canon of anime greats?

Of any anime film to ever exist, there are none that even come close to Akira in terms of the impact that it had. It had a limited release in the US and caused a massive culture shock. Among the Disney releases that were all designed for children, Akira would have been one of a kind, and firmly sealed itself as a cult classic. The worldwide box office pull was a massive 45 million dollars, which led to the VHS release of the film by Manga Entertainment, a distributor that was created for the sole purpose of distributing Akira. Akira was also the biggest anime production of its time, with a budget of approximately 8-11 billion yen, since it was a collaboration between 7 media conglomerates.

Essentially, Akira changed everything, the west became aware of what anime was, significantly boosted the popularity of manga and anime in the west. It led to the foundations of mass distribution of anime in America. Most importantly though, it began to deconstruct the notion in America that animation was a medium just for children. Anime as a medium today is on the border of gaining mainstream acceptance in the west, the volume and quality of anime productions have gone up as a whole, and it is now highly accessible in the west as well. As the west begins to consume more anime more westerners are beginning to work in the anime industry as well. All of this may still have been a few decades if not for the incredible effect that Akira had.

But why is Akira so good? The film only takes from the beginning of the manga, and the end of it, with the middle point being a confusing mess, with core characters and themes being overlooked. The full story of Akira is not in the film, which would be impossible to achieve in two hours, so does Akira have any right to be this beloved? I believe so. The huge budget for the film is apparent when you watch it. The frame rate of the film is very smooth for the time with 12 drawings a second, and in some places, 24 drawings a second, a far higher rate than other iconic Japanese studios of the time such as Studio Ghibli. As a result, Akira is one of the few works of animation of the times that could compete with the top quality productions of Disney Studios. Where Akira may have Disney beat though, is in the detail and world design, in many scenes in Akira there so many moving parts that it is difficult to keep track of everything that is happening, giving the film a chaotic vibe, which is exactly the vibe one would expect when an entire city is being destroyed, or in the middle of a violent revolt.

Without Akira making the impact that it did here in the western world, we may not have had to deal with annoying weebs. But that’s ok because at least the film is as good as it is heralded to be.

Super Eyepatch Wolf. (2018, May 6). The Impact of Akira: The Film that Changed Everything [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqVoEpRIaKg&list=PLiiEr5EE-YgxqzcU1Yo_1aIF6ZvP7dCOi

Week 3: Brendan O’Neill

How and why have Tintin’s gender and sexuality been questioned?

No artist, dead or alive, has full control over how their work is interpreted. For Hergé this must’ve been an inconvenient reality, as the likely intentional lack of solid defining traits for Tintin as a character would backfire in the long run. It was to Hergé’s disgust after all, when people began to question Tintin in ways that Hergé would have never predicted.

The first aspect of Tintin that has been brought to question is his gender. In terms of personality traits, Tintin doesn’t seem to strongly lean either way, for a character that exists within a ‘boys world’ he is surprisingly lacking in masculine traits. Furthermore, when in relation to Captain Haddock, Tintin begins to adopt feminine traits like being observant, silent, and tender. Tintin has the physical attributes of a teenager, despite almost certainly seeming to be an adult, since he provides for himself and is mostly independent, we never see even a strand of hair on his face or chest, and we have certainly never seen his genitals. The evidence that Tintin is a girl isn’t exactly substantial, and yet the same can be said for him being a guy. For a world that was designed to be for boys, that girls don’t belong in, Tintin doesn’t seem to entirely fit into that, and that is suspicious. The implications are that Tintin is a tomboy, rather than a real one, which may have some logic behind it. If I were a female journalist traveling the world in the time period of Tintin, I imagine I might dress as a boy to avoid prejudice.

The second aspect of Tintin that is in question is sexuality. Not once does Tintin show any kind of sexual or romantic desire towards anyone, which leaves it up to the reader to speculate. The lack of any kind of carnal desire from Tintin would immediately suggest that perhaps he is asexual, but there is still another option. All of Tintin’s strongest relationships are with men. As I mentioned before, Tintin’s personality had a slight change after he met Captain Haddock, and the two of them sometimes live together. There is also the strange scene where Haddock attempts to uncork Tintin, some saying this is Haddock symbolically penetrating and screwing Tintin. The character that Tintin seems to emotionally care about the most is Chang. Tintin dreams of Chang, cries out his name in waking, and weeps for Chang (Mountfort, 2020.)

Ultimately the actual arguments for Tintin being a girl or being gay or asexual are not particularly convincing, but it is equally impossible to prove that Tintin is a heterosexual male. The reason that these aspects of Tintin are questioned so intensely then, is because Tintin, by complete accident it seems, is an unidentifiable unknown, a puzzle with no intended solution.

Mountfort, P. (2020). Tintin, gender and desire. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2020.1729829