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Drawing on Debord’s the society of the spectacle and Evans and Giroux’s notion of the spectacle of violence, this paper argues that a discourse on war, organised violence, and global politics has b...

This paper explores the externalization process of the European Union’s (EU) borders by focusing on one of its least documented aspects: the funding of migration information campaigns (MICs) aiming...

A framework for thinking about borders in post-globalization scaffolds insights of emerging theory exemplary of prevailing in-betweenness of the border world. Epistemological advances frame dissens...

Many texts of early modern London are fascinated with crowds. The city’s growth and resulting crowdedness were essential to the city’s theatrical spaces, as the presence of crowds ‘turn[ed] London ...

The terror attack carried out at two mosques in Aotearoa New Zealand by a white supremacist in 2019 was intended as a spectacle for mass public consumption. Its live-stream on Facebook invited hype...

This study addresses the well-known history of Victorian naturalist Philip Gosse’s popularisation of the marine aquarium through a new lens: the period he spent in Jamaica during the 1840s. Firstly...

The representation of reality seems to have gained precedence over reality. In the society of the spectacle, entertainment has become the experience. Accordingly, sport organizations must increasin...

The group known as ‘incels’ (involuntary celibates, usually men) has become a spectacle for feminism as well as for mass media. Both popular and academic feminisms have condemned the incel for his ...

This article presents the results of an ethnography carried out in Lampedusa – a fundamental hub in the border spectacle of irregular migrations – during the COVID-19 emergency, where landings have...

Geri-action as a term within film studies describes a subgenre of action cinema in which, largely though not exclusively, men in their middle ages partake in narratives of action and spectacle, whi...

Yasser Elsheshtawy’s Temporary Cities: Resisting Transience in Arabia is, a decade after its landmark predecessor Behind an Urban Spectacle (Elsheshtawy 2009), a must read for urbanists. Yasser’s b...

Clinical relevance Effective spectacle coverage is a useful indicator to assess the coverage of refraction services in a given region. We found a low coverage in the Akividu region suggesting a need to develop effective refraction services. Background To assess the prevalence of spectacle use and effective spectacle coverage for distance vision among people aged 40 years and older in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Methods A population-based cross-sectional survey was carried out in the Akividu region in West Godavari and Krishna districts. The study teams visited selected households and conducted eye examinations in the selected clusters. A structured questionnaire was used to collect information on spectacle use. 'Met Need' was defined as unaided VA worse than 6/12 but improved to 6/12 or better with their current spectacles. 'Unmet Need' was defined as unaided VA worse than 6/12 but improved to 6/12 with pinhole, among those not using spectacles. The 'Under-met Need' was defined as aided VA worse than 6/12 but improving with pinhole to 6/12 or better. Based on these definitions, Effective Refractive Error Coverage (e-REC) is calculated as: e-REC (%) s = ((met need)/(met need + under-met need + unmet need)) X100. Results Of 3,000 enumerated from 60 clusters, 2,587 (86.2%) participants were examined. The prevalence of current spectacle use was 43.1% (95% CI:41.2-45.0). The e-REC was 37.4%. It was also lower in men compared to women and among those without any education. Participants who had cataract surgery in either eye had similar e-REC compared to those who were not operated. Conclusion Though spectacle use was found to be high, there is a still large unmet need for refractive correction for distance. Effective service delivery models to provide refraction and spectacle dispensing services are needed to achieve universal eye health coverage in the region.

This article maps and analyses the trajectory of India’s Covid-19 pandemic from its onset in early 2020 until the outbreak of the country’s devastating second wave a little over a year later. I beg...

This article examines two major rituals of contemporary national life in the UK: association football and military commemoration. It explores the ways in which remembering is enacted and performed within UK football and how these processes are related to issues of power, agency and identity in Britain today. Employing the concepts of collective memory and spectacle, this article argues that ‘memory entrepreneurs’ have sought to embed football as ‘site of memory’ in the performance of military commemoration. It concludes that this has contributed to the transformation of military commemoration, from a ritual that is observed to a spectacle that is consumed. This paper thus contributes to emergent debates on the militarization of civilian space, the shifting nature of civil–military relations in the twenty-first century, and the role of military remembrance in the reproduction of Britishness.

This article examines the symbolic, financial, and visual qualities of spectacular, multi-site, online art auctions staged by Sotheby’s and Christie’s during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is argued tha...

This article identifies key actors and explains the strategies they utilized in two recent border events: (1) the protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in Standing Rock, a...

The article analyses a case of prosecution for human smuggling. Three film crew members accompanied a Syrian refugee boy from Greece to Sweden, while recording the journey in a documentary that was screened on Swedish public television in 2015. Despite widespread recognition, they were prosecuted and found guilty of human smuggling by all the levels of the Swedish judiciary. Using a variety of materials – text and visual data, observations and interviews – we follow the case as it moves across different arenas: the media, the court and in activism. The analysis is inspired by and further develops de Genova’s notion of the border as spectacle. What conditions for acting and speaking structure the arenas, and how and from which positions can the border spectacle be contested? The motion across these arenas offers an opportunity to disclose the operation of the borders as a regime that controls people’s mobility and solidarity in unequal ways.

Drawing from Jean-Luc Marion’s discussion of the ‘crossing of gazes’ in religious art, this article explores the complex relationship between the spectacle of the religious experience and its spectators, as well as that spectacle’s highly gendered nature. In contrast to earlier representations of religious women on stage and screen, the performances of feminine spirituality in Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo’s 2013 musical La llamada and Chema Tena’s 2017 production of Argentine playwright Maria Marull’s La Pilarcita centre female spiritual experience and further the self-actualization of the characters, confounding the scopic regimes that governed earlier productions.

This paper details the manner in which Trump’s brand image and use of political spectacle attempt to displace political authority reliant on rationality in decision making, which has long legitimat...

During the last few years, Athens is experiencing a substantial increase in tourist inflows, while transforming from a one-day stop destination during summer to a year-round, city-break destination...

This article analyses contemporaneous debates over the competing screen formats, venues, and technological platforms designed to deliver moving images to domestic and public audiences in mid-twenti...

During the Northern Ireland conflict (1968–1998), paramilitary groups were supported and sustained by a sociocultural apparatus that helped legitimise their position within the community and disseminate their political message. From the use of flags and murals, to loyalist and republican parades, working-class vernacular culture revealed who was in control of various districts within the Province. For many working-class Protestants, loyalist songs were a key component of this culture, connecting the past and the present. Unlike the better-known marching band scene, which is a huge public spectacle, the loyalist song scene is much more private. Performed in a closed setting, within local bars and clubs, loyalist songs are reproduced for internal consumption rather than outward expression. Yet, in addition to celebrating a particular loyalist culture, such songs also serve an important function in authenticating and legitimising paramilitary groups, connecting them to older organisations, whose legacy they draw upon. This paper focuses on one such song, exploring how ‘The Ballad of Billy McFadzean’ is used to connect the Ulster Volunteer Force of the 1960s onwards, with the 1913 organisation of the same name. In so doing, the paper attempts to illustrate the political utility of song and how songs can be used to launder and legitimise conflict, as well as those engaged in political violence.

This study develops the notion of infrastructural excess to foreground how representational strategies and security practices combine to facilitate a specific political rationality of public bus tr...

Hung over the streets and in large quantity, Hong Kong’s neon signs make a highly identifiable urban spectacle. The colonial history and geographical advantages have transformed Hong Kong into a cu...

Shaped by the forces of globalisation, commericalisation and mediatisation, contemporary cricket has been repackaged as a media-centric “product” notable for innovative and experimental technologie...

Critical policy analysis examining how powerful actors use educational policies to reproduce unequal social structures presents many challenges. These challenges are amplified by the politics of sp...

In this article I explore the role of Africans in the Nizam of Hyderabad’s armed forces at the end of the nineteenth century. In particular I focus on their representation in newspaper and eye-witn...

This essay analyzes the growing trend of candidates bearing arms in political ads. We argue this genre represents the enactment of White masculinity through the spectacle of violence that capitaliz...

This essay analyses the changing politics of beauty labour and female body image in Indian cinema. It begins by discussing how beauty, a social capital for women, is a measuring rod with which their bodies are both assessed and objectified. It claims that cinema being a visual medium demands some aesthetic capital from actors, and the beauty of leading ladies portrayed on screen often adds to the spectacle. Focusing on mainstream Bollywood films produced especially over the last two decades, this essay examines narratives upholding the beauty ideal both as a cinematic necessity and also as a plot point. Tracing developments in cinematic representations of female beauty, it then examines select postmillennial films (both mainstream Bollywood as well as regional productions) to suggest that a maturing trend in representing female bodies is emerging in Indian cinema where instead of the prettified heroine one increasingly encounters protagonists who refuse to agonize under beauty labour. Finally, it argues that owing to global debates and critical feminist interventions on female body image, a radical shift is palpable in postmillennial Indian films which showcase women who either reject or redefine the politics of beauty labour.

A review of a 1983 exhibition of photographs by Cindy Sherman held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in which the pictures are called Untitled Filmstills. The author of the review, Anna Tilroe, s...

The aquarium constructed for the 1867 Exposition captivated nineteenth-century attendees through its unprecedented design uniting two spatial imaginaries exploited by writers and explorers alike: t...

This article argues that after the Russian presidential election in 2012, the Kremlin mobilised a populist, anti-fascist affect called ‘Russianicity’ that Vladimir Putin used to help legitimate his...

This article draws attention to the oppositional critiques of History and Humanism four Black mothers performed as they (re)made public memories of their children who had been killed by state-sanct...

This article aims to provide the first comprehensive overview of the activities of the visual arts community active during the siege of Sarajevo (1992–1995), focusing on the shifts in practical and...

This essay explores the postmodern image economy with regard to the depiction of Rome as a global city of the spectacle in Paolo Sorrentino’s La grande bellezza. It argues that an incongruity exist...

How might it have felt to have your work on display? Not only the objects you crafted, but your actual labor? He would have known, the glassworker in the window. Charles Mayer and Company, a store ...

This article examines the survival of rushbearing, a rural leisure tradition in the English Lake District. As a region popular with tourists throughout the twentieth century, this case study offers...

In 1897 Milan’s La Scala Theatre mounted a massive narrative ballet entitled simply Sport. It was a celebration in dance and spectacle of such activities as mountain climbing, horseracing, skating,...

Inspired by researchers’ observations of the increased use of things in modern society, discussions about non-human actors, and the author Georges Perec’s interest in what happens when nothing seem...

The COVID-19 pandemic has repercussions well beyond the confines of borders. National border policies can thwart international efforts to combat the spread of infectious diseases. These problems ar...

Inxeba (The Wound) has emerged as an immensely vital film in the ongoing quest for greater representation of queer subjectivities. The film scripts a narrative whose affective capacity has a great ...

Captivating film posters and advertisements with images of idolized actors like Mammootty and Mohanlal blended in with vivid colours and appealing captions is a spectacle that is a part of the cult...

Urban modernity, since its conceptualization, has been founded on the discourses of what Guy Debord calls “spectacles” or the grand, majestic, decorated expressions of the Imperial/Capitalist progr...

Chariot races were the earliest, most popular, and longest-lived of all forms of ‘spectacles’ in the Roman world. This essay surveys the spatial and architectural framework of the Circus Maximus, t...

This article argues that Russia’s use of lethal violence against intelligence defectors has to be understood as a public spectacle in which Russian leaders and intelligence officials never intended...

The centennial of the First World War constituted a major event for many nations. For New Zealand, much of the memorialization focused on the campaign at Gallipoli, which has become an important pa...

Any academic working on a contemporary topic fears significant developments coming along shortly after publishing a book. Michael Serazio was braced for this possibility, as he expressed in an earl...