Stop The Pregnant Horse Blood Trade! [Petition]

Image via Avaaz.org

Dear friends,

It’s straight out of a horror movie: hundreds of pregnant horses hooked up to blood-draining machines, some so weak they collapse and die. But we can stop this right now. 

The industrial horse torture is driven by European pharmaceutical companies who use the blood to speed up factory farming! The EU has said it’s considering action, but so far nothing has happened. 

No more horses need to die! Ministers are meeting in just 2 weeks -- let’s light a fire under the EU with a massive million person petition demanding they ban the abusive pregnant horse blood trade. 

Add your name to the petition below *with one click* and tell everyone:  

>> Click to sign the petition

To the EU Parliament, Commission, and Council:

We call on you to ban the import to Europe of any goods produced using techniques which are cruel and cause suffering to animals. As a world leader in animal welfare, Europe should apply its own standards to products it imports. 

>> Click to sign the petition

Death is far from the only horror: so much blood is taken that it can lead to shock and anaemia. And because only the blood of pregnant horses is valuable, they’re often forced into repeat pregnancies and abortions. 

Demand is driven by pharmaceutical companies who sell the hormone found in pregnant horse blood to factory farmers to get pigs and other animals in “heat” on demand -- another layer of abuse in this sorry story.  

If we shine a light on this horror by raising a massive global outcry now, we can help get a ban of all products made from the suffering of animals -- making it difficult for companies all over the world to make big profits from this disturbing industry. 

Add your name to the petition above with one click on the link, then forward this to friends and family -- let's build pressure on the EU to act!  

>> Click to sign the petition

Horses are full of beauty, grace and majesty -- it's hard to understand how people could be so cruel. But when we come together in massive numbers to protect animals from the horrors they face every day, we can do incredible things. Let's do it now for these horses who need us to be their voice more than ever.

With hope,

Loup Dargent

On behalf of Oli, Rewan, Bert, Ari, Camille, Nataliya, Ricken and the entire Avaaz team

More information: 

• The cruel trade with pregnant mare blood (Animals' Angels USA)
• Blood farms investigation (Animal Welfare Foundation)
• Turning horse blood into profits (The Dodo) 
• Why is the world out for horses’ blood? (The Guardian)

Brexit, Comedy And 'Britishness' – What To Do When Parody Becomes Real

A local shop, for local people. BBC

By Neil Archer, Keele University

If as it is said comedy is tragedy plus the benefit of time, sometimes time allows things to come full circle. When in 1999 Edward and Tubbs, characters from the BBC’s The League of Gentlemen, declared their Royston Vasey village store “a local shop for local people” I laughed because their narrow-minded localist zeal seemed so grotesquely out of step with the UK’s global and multicultural attitudes. But in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, where not being “local” became a figurative, legal or literal stick with which to beat others, Edward and Tubbs have lost some comic lustre and gained an eerie relevance.

In much film and television comedy of the New Labour years – such as the Simon Pegg film Hot Fuzz (2007), where civic pride concealed satanic rituals of local “cleansing”, or Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), where the threat to local produce instills villagers with a mob mentality – it is an inclusive, plural, playful sense of “Britishness” that is the implied alternative to these excesses. When I recognised the Britishness of these films and how I identified with it, I realised that, to a large extent, this Britishness did not really exist – or at least, it only existed as an ironic gesture or parody. The alternative, of course, was to assert the sort of cultural and racial essentialism that has long been among the unpalatable myths used by nationalists the world over.

In laughing along, I feel that Britishness is here defined by not taking the concept of Britishness at all seriously. This isn’t itself an innately British quality, but it could be thought of as a certain post-imperial tendency in the comedy that has shaped a prevalent part of British culture since the 1960s. The sort of comedy that is as much obsessed by historical myths of Britishness as it is derisive of them: Beyond the Fringe, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Ripping Yarns, Blackadder, and The League of Gentlemen.

This comic playfulness regarding Britishness has become a key vehicle for promoting British culture abroad through hugely successful rom-coms such as Notting Hill or Love Actually. That the UK tops recent indexes of global soft power owes much to the self-effacing and metropolitan charms of films such as these. It is also apt that Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean persona, Britain’s most exportable comedy brand, should have found a central role in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics.

The inspired choice to have Atkinson’s weary keyboardist daydream his way through a travesty of Chariots of Fire’s opening scene – a film more often associated with flag-waving jingoism – helped rework the ceremony’s traditional cultural remit towards less aggressively nationalistic or historically essentialist terrain. Recall also that the show began with Her Majesty jumping from a helicopter strapped to a Union Jack parachute. Yet this same send-up of British iconography also served in the context of the ceremony as a form of soft patriotism: one that while drawing a line under Britain’s imperial past, was no less assertive even through parody of its new cultural standing in the world.

But that was 2012. The events of 2016 point towards political isolationism and more tightly prescribed notions of national identity, with significant repercussions for British comedy. How do we reconcile, for example, the divergent comedic impulses to leave or remain? The League’s village of Royston Vasey is taken from the birth name of Roy “Chubby” Brown, a foul-mouthed and anarchic British comedian who has mined cultural and ethnic prejudices to perennially popular effect. The uncomfortable potency of the League’s dark comedy comes from their willingness to flirt with sentiments that have clearly not been banished to the past, but which still churn away just under the surface.

The lessons of “Chubby” Brown and a whole other tradition of British comedy dating from the 1970s (oddly enough, the decade that Britain entered the European Economic Community), such as the Carry On films, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, and Mind Your Language, are that comedy can as easily reinforce exclusive and culturally fixed notions of national identity as it can dispel them. Nor can we simply laugh away such comedy’s potent appeal, however much it might make us squirm.

The role of comedy in negotiating not only a hard or soft Brexit, but hard and soft conceptions of Britishness, will be a pressing concern both for comedy producers and those who write about it. It was perhaps fitting that this of all summers should see the BBC attempting, in an evidently nostalgic gesture, to revive popular sitcoms from the 1970s, and just as apt that the week after the EU referendum saw the release of Absolutely Fabulous – a very knowing comedy portrayal of national self-denial. The wider impact of the events of 2016 on the cultural and comedic tendencies to come remains to be seen.


About Today's Contributor:
Neil Archer, Lecturer in Film Studies, Keele University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

UK: Where Press Regulation Is Concerned, We're Already Being Fed 'Post-Truth' Journalism

SamJonah

By Brian Cathcart, Kingston University

The Times newspaper greeted the start of 2017 by warning: “The freedom of the press is under direct and immediate threat.” Its Murdoch stablemate, The Sun, went further by identifying the “sinister zealots behind regulators [who] want to destroy the popular press”. The Daily Mail, meanwhile, urged its readers to: “Act NOW if you want to help defend the right to read a website like MailOnline.”

Free speech in Britain – which has been a beacon of human rights since 1689 – is clearly under threat. Or is it? It depends who you believe.

Anyone attempting to follow the progress of press regulation in the UK can be forgiven some bewilderment – and also some impatience. Matters generally thought to have been sorted out after the Leveson Inquiry seem suddenly to be surfacing again, and the public is being asked to take an urgent interest in something called Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act. This provides for costs in defamation cases and mandates that judges can direct newspapers to pay both sides’ costs even if they win a libel case.

Make no mistake: the bewilderment and impatience have been deliberately engineered by the corporate press – by which I mean the Murdoch, Mail, Mirror, Express and Telegraph papers – whose objective is to sabotage all change, including changes already passed into law by parliament. With this objective in mind, these newspapers have engaged in a rampage of misinformation.

“MPs are considering forcing newspapers to pay celebs and politicians who sue – even if cases are thrown out”, declared a recent editorial in The Sun, beneath a headline about protecting the free press and keeping investigative journalism alive. Similar messages have even been rammed home to the employees of these companies in internal emails.

Sinister zealots behind press regulator would willingly destroy popular press. But you can stop them https://t.co/e14QfNPGF1

— Tony Gallagher (@tonygallagher) December 30, 2016

These publications are desperate to give a veneer of legitimacy to the work of their political allies who are trying to bury the Leveson reforms and with them the second part of the Leveson Inquiry (which deals with criminality rather than regulation). Having stalled both of these measures at the behest of the press, ministers have launched a consultation about the next step – the implementation of Section 40 – and the papers are going all out for the option of complete abandonment.

Blurring the truth
Despite The Sun’s rhetoric, MPs are not actually involved in implementing Section 40 for the good reason that the Crime and Courts Act was passed into law with the support of every party in 2013. Section 40 is not about celebrities and politicians – on the contrary, what it chiefly does is to give every citizen a historic new right of access to affordable justice in cases of libel and unjustified intrusion.

If the government will only put Section 40 into operation, we will see the end of the age-old British scandal by which only the very rich or the very lucky get to uphold their rights against libellers and those who violate our privacy rights.

But it is precisely because it gives us all that right that the corporate papers and their friends are fighting it. They are terrified by the idea that ordinary people might suddenly be able to sue them and get damages.

As with most post-truth news, there is a germ of truth in what The Sun claims and it is this: if someone wants to exercise the right to affordable justice through arbitration and a newspaper refuses to cooperate, so forcing them to take the far more expensive route of court proceedings, then the judge will have the option of making the newspaper pay both sides’ costs even if the paper wins.

Far from being outrageous, as The Sun and others suggest, this is absolutely fair. What would be unfair would be to leave editors with the power to pick and choose which claimants can use cheap arbitration. All experience tells us that they would push the rich into arbitration, thus saving money, and push the rest of us towards the courts knowing we can’t afford it and so would abandon our cases.

This has nothing to do with rich celebs – who have long been among the privileged few able to afford to sue. Instead it is about empowering people who, in the absence of Section 40, are left powerless.

No state control
The Sun’s comments are self-serving. By banging on about “state-backed regulation”, corporate papers aim to smear “recognised regulation” as set out under the Royal Charter of 2013 with the taint of censorship.

Powerful voices. Lenscap Photography

Recognised regulation is regulation that meets the basic standards of independence and effectiveness set out in the Leveson Report as necessary to uphold standards and protect the public from abuse.

The test is applied by the Press Recognition Panel, which although a public body enjoys unprecedented and unique independence from ministerial or political influence – and one of the criteria it applies is that a regulator must have no power “to prevent the publication of any material, by anyone, at any time”.

So far from representing a step towards state control, the charter system has freedom of expression at its heart – and no one has been able to show any way in which it could inhibit public interest journalism. There are no rational grounds for any responsible news publisher to object to regulation under the charter.

Yet the propaganda continues. The papers that hold the megaphone of mass communication are all shouting the same words together and, at the same time, refusing even a hint of balance in their reporting.

Despite all of this, there is something you can do. Hacked Off is helping coordinate responses to the government consultation, which closes on January 10. There at least you cannot be drowned out by the megaphone.


About Today's Contributor:
Brian Cathcart, Professor of Journalism, Kingston University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

The Violent, Post-Truth 2017 Predicted In The Running Man? We're Living In It

‘It’s showtime!’ Movies in LA, CC BY-SA

By David Bishop, Edinburgh Napier University

Welcome to a world where fake news stories are used to manipulate public opinion. Dissent is no longer tolerated and all your communications are monitored; the economy is not functioning and reality TV is used to distract you from harsher realities. Welcome to 2017.

I don’t mean our 2017 but an imagined one from 30 years ago. This was the setting for 1987 movie The Running Man, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bad news? Much of this action-adventure slugfest looks eerily prophetic now that we’re here for real.

In the film, Schwarzenegger plays police helicopter pilot Ben Richards in a 2017 when many people are living on the streets and food, natural resources and oil are in short supply. The movie begins with him refusing to fire on a food riot from his helicopter because the people are unarmed, with women and children caught up in the protest. He gets overpowered by colleagues and the rioters are massacred, with footage of the incident edited to make him the perpetrator – and a useful scapegoat.

The original.

Imprisoned for life, Richards is offered the chance to win his freedom by competing in the most popular TV programme in history, Running Man. This state-sponsored show pits contestants against high-profile hunters with extreme weaponry. It’s a Schwarzenegger vehicle from his 1980s heyday, so you can probably guess who wins.

The script by Steven E de Souza loosely adapts a 1982 novel of the same name by Richard Bachman, the pseudonym of horror author Stephen King. The source material is set in 2025 and far less heroic. It ends with Richards hijacking an aeroplane and flying it into the television company’s skyscraper headquarters – stop me if this is sounding in any way familiar.

The film adaptation is a product of its time, with 1980s props that look out of place in the fictional 2017 setting. People carry clipboards instead of tablet computers, use analogue phones rather than mobiles, and store their music on cassette. The Running Man does feature smart home technology, like voice-controlled coffee makers, but the computers are primitive. It’s the satirical touches that stand out most in this film, such as the president of the United States having his own theatrical agent.

When in Rome …
The central conceit of both novel and film – that those in power use mass entertainment to distract the population from reality – is part of a long tradition. It dates all the way back to the Roman empire when the masses were appeased with free wheat and arena spectacles, a tactic described as panem et circenses – bread and circuses.

One of the first writers to transplant this notion to television was Quartermass creator Nigel Kneale in his 1968 play for BBC Two, The Year of the Sex Olympics. It envisaged a dystopian future where the elite maintains control over the people by broadcasting a constant stream of pornography and trash television.

Kneale effectively predicted the rise of reality TV programmes like Big Brother and I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here; and much other science fiction has drawn on the same theme. It appears, for example, in Doctor Who in the 1985 adventure Vengeance on Varos – set in a totalitarian world where torture and executions are televised to amuse and divert the masses – and more recently in The Hunger Games trilogy.

The additional element that makes The Running Man even more resonant right now is fake news. The fake footage of Richards’ helicopter massacre is replayed to the live audience in the game show studio to coerce them into believing Schwarzenegger’s character is a liar, a murderer and a threat to everyone. The programmers then do the same thing to his sidekick, Amber Mendez (Maria Conchita Alonso), before later faking their televised deaths during the game itself.

It’s not unlike how social media and even some broadcasters have been guilty of distributing and promoting fake news in recent months, especially during the US presidential election. When psychotic Running Man host Damon Killian (Richard Dawson) interviews studio audience members in the movie, their simple-minded responses echo footage of real American voters dismissing reality for what they’ve been told on TV or via alt-right news sites.

Muscular politics
Meanwhile, The Running Man cast included not one but two men who would improbably become governors of American states. Jesse Ventura, then best known as a professional wrestler, appears as gameshow veteran Captain Freedom. In 1999, Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota, serving a full four-year term.

The Governator. EPA

Schwarzenegger, a former bodybuilder, was then elected governor of California in 2003 and re-elected in 2006. And having starred in a movie about the potential dangers of reality TV, on January 2 he will become host of Celebrity Apprentice in the US. The person he replaces? A real estate tycoon called Donald Trump who will become the president of the United States in the coming days, despite losing the popular vote.

Trump has appointed as his chief strategist and senior counsellor Stephen Bannon. Until recently, Bannon was executive chair of Breitbart News, a right-wing website accused of massaging facts to promote its agenda and win the election for his new boss. And lest we forget, one key part of Trump’s mandate is to revive an economy that has never recovered from the financial crisis of 2007-08.

Put it all together and the 2017 of The Running Man doesn’t look very far away.


About Today's Contributor:
David Bishop, Lecturer in Creative Writing, Edinburgh Napier University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

A Million Reasons To Hope In 2017

Images via Avaaz.org 

Dear Avaazers, 

In 2016, hate was given hope -- but now we take it back! 

From terrorism to Trump to Syria, it was a rough year. But hidden by all the darkness filling our screens, there's a simple, beautiful, truth: 

The world has never been in a better place. 

From poverty to literacy, the rise of women and fall of deadly disease -- on virtually every metric -- the world is better off than it's ever been. It's a powerful reason for us all to have hope, and rise to 2017. 

So to kick off the new year, here's a video of 10 beautiful reasons to have hope -- let's share them, add our own, and together give the world a million reasons to hope in 2017: 

Share this on facebook 

Even on the environment, we're winning epic progress on everything from historic ocean conservation to an unstoppable revolution in clean energy!

Political extremists and divisive zealots thrive on fear and desperation. That's why they try to convince us that the world is falling apart.

Master trolls like Trump and Putin have even hired vast armies of both real people and fake "bots" to hijack our social media with smears and lies about how awful everything and everyone else is, except them. (this is true! see sources below). What better way to answer them than a million new year's posts about what gives each of us and all of us hope: 

Share this on facebook 

Let's take this dose of hope, and let it fuel our determination and that of our friends. Because in 2017, together, we rise. 

With hope, 

Loup Dargent

On behalf of Ricken, Pascal, Bert, Emma, Mike, Fatima and the whole Avaaz team. 

PS - This new year's reflection feels so important, for each of us, and for a world that is at a tipping point -- between love, hope and wisdom, and fear, anger and ignorance. Here are 5 points of reflection that might be useful for your reflection this year: 

1. Yes, things are serious. A new autocratic world order (60% of Avaazers believe even a second rise of fascism) could threaten everything we love.


2. But this is also a tremendous opportunity. Humanity, like each of us, learns best from mistakes. Much of our greatest progress has been catalyzed by crisis. If we meet this moment right, we can emerge from it stronger and wiser than ever.


3. We need to be strong, and to challenge the forces of regress. But let’s not be twisted by the darkness and act from fear and anger. We are warriors for love and wisdom. We must act from that light.


4. When we do come from love and wisdom, we can see that our ‘enemy’ is not so much any people, as it is unwisdom. Misplaced fear and anger. Lack of awareness and understanding.


5. These are age-old foes of our people. Our grandparents faced far worse with far less, and they won progress. We have every reason to hope, and no excuse for despair.

And lastly - all the forces present in our world are present within us. Fear and love. Hope and despair. The choices we make in our personal lives shape our world through billions of acts of kindness or cruelty, wisdom or foolishness. All we can do is our best. Let's hit that mark this year :).

SOURCES: 

• 99 Reasons Why 2016 Was a Good Year
• How a Putin Fan Overseas Pushed Pro-Trump Propaganda to Americans (New York Times)
• Invasion of the troll armies (The Guardian)

Southend-on-Sea: Street Artist Pays Tribute To Carrie Fisher By Doing What He Does Best

Original Images via 'Your Southend' Facebook Page

I'm so glad I follow 'Your Southend' on Facebook... if not, I might have missed their post about this brilliant tribute to the late Carrie Fisher by a local street artist and I would definitely have kicked myself. 

Image via 'Your Southend' Facebook Page

This new piece of street art, from local artist John Bulley, is on the seafront and a 20-minute walking distance from where I live... I'll definitely go check it as soon as possible.

Image via 'Your Southend' Facebook Page

Anyway, I thought I would share this wonderful tribute (and masterpiece) with you guys.

Enjoy!

Loup Dargent

John Bulley - Image via 'Your Southend' Facebook Page

PS: Thanks (once again) to 'Your Southend' for the heads-up and John Bulley for his great work.

PPS: BTW, John Bulley has a website... Click here If you want to know more about this Southend based talented artist. Definitely worth a visit or two!

Was 2016 Just 1938 All Over Again?

Demonstrators march on international migrant day 2016. EPA

By Julie Gottlieb, University of Sheffield

On December 31 1937, Cambridge classicist and man of letters F L Lucas embarked on an experiment. He would keep a diary for exactly one calendar year. It was, as he put it: “an attempt to give one answer, however inadequate, however fragmentary, to the question that will surely be asked one day by some of the unborn – with the bewilderment, one hopes, of a happier age: ‘What can it have felt like to live in that strange, tormented and demented world?’”

Lucas sought to preserve an affective archive, and to write about how it felt to live in an era of spiralling crisis.

As someone who wasn’t born in 1938 I cannot help but feel that Lucas’ solemn hope that his generation was living through the worst of it – and that lessons would surely be learned – have been well and truly dashed. Has 2016 been 1938 all over again?

Bowled over by the news this past year, one can be forgiven for grasping for the crutches of historical analogy. Indeed, a number of eminent historians of inter-war Europe have discerned thunderous echoes of the 1930s.

At present, as in the “Devil’s Decade”, we are experiencing the capricious convergence of historical forces: the fall-out of economic crisis and the extreme polarisation of the political spectrum from far-right to hard-left – the centre doesn’t hold. A tidal wave of refugees is being met by proportionately more xenophobia than compassion. Militant isolationism is thriving. Doors are being closed and walls built. Culture wars are punctuated by attacks on “experts” and intellectuals. 2016 has even seen open an unashamed airing of anti-Semitism.

The historical parallels between 2016 and 1938 are abundant. There are important differences in detail, in time and place, but the pattern of events, and of cause and effect, is striking.

Civil war raged in Spain then – as it rages in Syria today. Then as now, these internecine conflicts provide mirrors to existing fissures in international relations and deepening ideological antagonisms. By the end of 1938, and after Abyssinia, Spain, Anschluss, and Kristallnacht, not much faith was left in the ideal of internationalism or in the League of Nations – and this too sounds all too familiar.

The aftermath of the Kristallnacht. Bundesarchiv, CC BY-SA

The rescue of refugee children through the Kindertransports was just as symbolically important, yet as negligible, a solution to an immense humanitarian and moral crisis as has been the response to lone children refugees holed up in Calais this year. And what of Aleppo? Shame was, and is, a dominant feeling.

Where next?
The Munich Agreement of September 1938 was perceived by many of its British critics as an act of national suicide. The Brexit decision has likewise, again and again, been described as an act of self-harm, even of national hari-kari.

Writing at the end of the year, contemporary historian R W Seaton-Watson had no doubt that 1938 had “resulted in a drastic disturbance of the political balance on the Continent, the full consequences of which is still too soon to estimate”. Treaties weren’t worth the paper they were written on in 1938 – and at the end of 2016 it is worryingly unclear where Britain will stand after triggering Article 50.

Meanwhile, George Orwell’s assessment of the disarray of the political left post-Munich could just as well apply to Momentum and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party. As Orwell saw it:

Barring some unforeseen scandal or a really large disturbance inside the Conservative Party, Labour’s chances of winning the General Election seem very small. If any kind of Popular Front is formed, its chances are probably less than those of Labour unaided. The best hope would seem to be that if Labour is defeated, the defeat may drive it back to its proper ‘line’.

Full circle
One could go on seeking coordinates but the sum total would still be the same. The rug has been pulled out from under the assumed solidity of the liberal democratic project. A delicate tapestry of structures and ideas is coming apart at the seams.

Even more specifically, it is the psychological experience, the search for meaning, and the emotional cycle, the feelings – collective and individual – of 1938 that are uncannily familiar.

Post-truth politics is anti-rational. Emotion has unexpectedly triumphed over reason in 2016. Love and/or hate has beaten intellect. That’s true for Hillary Clinton’s “love trumps hate” slogan as much as it is for her opponent.

The referendum result shook many. PA

New political technologies render older ones obsolete. In both Britain’s referendum campaign and in the American election, traditional opinion polls failed to capture the emotion being expressed across social media platforms.

Back in 1938, it was British Gallup and the rival Mass-Observation that were the innovative political technologies. Using very different techniques, each offered fresh insight into the psychology of political behaviour and tried to unseal the stiff upper lip of the British electorate.

Mass-Observation tried to get into people’s heads, and diagnosed an increasing occurrence of “crisis fatigue” as a response to nervous strain and “a sense of continuous crisis”.

Almost immediately after the EU referendum, therapists reported “shockingly elevated levels of anxiety and despair, with few patients wishing to talk about anything else”. And the visceral nature of the US election campaign contributed, tragically, to the exponential increase of calls to suicide helplines. National crisis is inevitably internalised.

Reflecting on the psychological fallout of the Munich Crisis, novelist E M Forster observed that: “exalted in contrary directions, some of us rose above ourselves, and others committed suicide.”

As 1938 drew to a close, serious conversations were dominated by the verbal and physical expressions of fatalism, anxiety, sickness, depression, and impending doom. Lucas wrote in his diary:

The Crisis seems to have filled the world with nervous break-downs. Or perhaps the Crisis itself was only one more nervous break-down of a world driven by the killing pace of modern life and competition into ever acuter neurasthenia [shell shock].

It is too simplistic to say that history repeats itself. And yet, throughout this past year I could not escape the feeling that we have been here before. We share with those who lived through 1938 overwhelming sensibility of bewilderment, suspense, desperation and fear of the unknown. I can’t help but wonder what future historians will make of 2016.

It’s probably sage advice to go see a good movie over the holidays – and La La Land, already tipped to win an Oscar, may provide just the kind of escapism that is needed. However, when someone comes to make the movie of 2016, the soundtrack will probably be the late Leonard Cohen’s You Want it Darker. It certainly feels like 1938 all over again. Time to start keeping a diary.


About Today's Contributor:
Julie Gottlieb, Reader in Modern History, University of Sheffield

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

VR Cinema Is Here – And Audiences Are In The Drivers' Seat

In virtual reality cinema, the audience chooses what to look at and when. What does this mean for traditional narrative storytelling? Virtual reality cinema in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Sander Koning/ANP

By Adam Daniel, Western Sydney University

A new kind of cinema has come to the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood. Twelve comfy swivel chairs let the audience explore the entire 360 degrees visible through their headsets. This is proper virtual reality cinema, finally realised.

VR cinema has been a long-promised yet undelivered tease for cinephiles. The nascent boom in VR experimentation in the early 1990s was held back for decades by, among other issues, the technical limitations of creating media for this new form. In recent years, these have largely been overcome.

But what kind of cinema will emerge? Probably not traditional narrative productions: filmmakers must come up with new storytelling techniques to account for a technology that explodes the frame, placing the spectator inside the space of the film.

To explain briefly, VR cinema is filmed on a static camera that can record in 360 degrees. The unlimited perspectives of this camera allow a user wearing a headset to rotate and look at the complete 360 degrees, including along the vertical axis.

For a filmmaker, there are now new issues around such basic techniques as montage. Directors can no longer cut rapidly from image to image, compressing time and space. Audiences literally edit the film for themselves, by choosing what to look at and when.

Artists are already exploring these opportunities. Director Chris Milk’s 2015 work Clouds Over Sidra places the viewer inside the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, observing daily life. The film was made in conjunction with the United Nations to highlight the Syrian refugee crisis.

Chris Milk is the founder and CEO of virtual reality technology company, Within. Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Milk, in his March 2015 TED talk, describes how he was driven by a desire to put the viewer not just “inside the frame”, but “through the window.” This desire was driven by what he saw as VR’s capacity to accentuate human connection: VR as an “empathy machine”.

The placement of those watching inside the space of the film prompts many VR filmmakers to directly address the viewer, as either a character or a kind of objective camera in the world of the narrative.

The horror short Escape The Living Dead, for example, initially places the viewer as one of a small group of survivors fleeing a zombie invasion in the back of a jeep. It even goes so far as to transform you, the viewer, into one of the zombie horde after you are bitten during the escape.

An inner monologue (addressed to the viewers through their headset) acknowledges “I’m turning!” as your normal vision begins to blur and black out. When you come to, your perception is distorted and licked by flames, and, as you glance from side to side, you realise you are now one of them: a zombie. As such, you now mindlessly pursue the final survivor, your wife, even as she fires bullet after bullet directly at you.

Virtual reality cinema isn’t passive watching but an active experience. Charles Platiau/Retuers

This complete breakdown of the “fourth wall” has tremendous implications for conventional cinematic storytelling. As directors grapple with newly available technology, audiences can perhaps expect to see more films that create “experiences” rather than “narratives”.

One group of filmmakers, the Oculus Story Studio, has recommended that VR cinema should “let go” of trying to direct viewers’ gaze, to avoid storytelling that feels “forced, staged and artificial.”

Where many early VR projects were inclined to attempt to draw spectators’ attention to one particular part of the 360 degree world, more contemporary projects have embraced its unique facility for immersion and interactivity.

Australian artist Lynette Wallworth used this capacity to help the viewer understand the implications of nuclear testing in the West Australian desert for the indigenous Martu tribe in her beautifully executed work Collisions.

Perhaps the most powerful potential of this “empathy machine” is the possibility for cinematic projects that are able to respond to and react to the viewer’s choices.

This would require database-style narratives, where an alternative path taken by a viewer – for example, where to look and when – would have different outcomes designated by the filmmaker.

This kind of cinema becomes similar to the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series, and has been experimented with in the past: 1967 Czech film Kinoautomat, for example, had a moderator who would allow the audience to make a choice between two narrative options at several points during the film. VR, however, could integrate this directly into the viewing experience based on where the viewer directs their attention.

Steven Spielberg is set to create a project solely for VR. Ian Langsdon/EPA

Experimentation in the field is continuing at a rapid pace, with Disney and Lucasfilm developing VR Star Wars projects. There has also been much speculation that Steven Spielberg, who previously signed on as an advisor with Virtual Reality Company, is making a project solely for VR.

New venues like Collingwood’s Virtual Reality cinema, which uses a custom Group VR system so the audience can see each other, as well as the film, are giving smaller filmmakers opportunities to develop and show VR work.

And the most important basic units of true VR – the immersive headsets, which need to be paired with separate hardware like a computer or phone – are becoming increasingly available to home audiences.

The commercial release of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets earlier this year, and the recent long-awaited release of the Playstation VR headset, will all undoubtedly encouraged further development in VR cinema, as will the Samsung GearVR and the upcoming Google Daydream.

Virtual reality will probably not replace conventional cinema. But it will create a whole new area of film that is less concerned about constructing a story in images. Instead, perhaps, it will be a realm where artists can immerse us inside imagined worlds in a whole new way.


About Today's Contributor:
Adam Daniel, Ph.d Candidate, Western Sydney University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.