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This paper will look at the convergence of the interactive free flow of video games and the questioning and revisioning of historical continuity using the example of the Assassin's Creed series by Ubisoft. With a story that exists simultaneously in the modern day and the 15th century, the games allow the player to take control of characters and alter, or make possible, events recognisable as historical fact. It plays with both history and memory and history as memory, as the life of the primary player character is being relived through the genetic memories of one of his descendants. Being highly narrative-bound, the Assassin's Creed games use, via the medium of the screen, the rift between history and memory as a central element of narrative, theme, and game design, which this paper will explore. Furthermore, using theories of convergence this paper will examine how video games provide a new, interactive mode of storytelling that is rapidly becoming representative of our age.

Comme naguère Jean-Jacques Rousseau dénonçait le scandale d'une société fondée sur l'inégalité, avec la même clarté, et un bonheur d'écriture que seule peut inspirer la passion du juste, Aimé Césaire prend ses distance par rapport au monde occidental et le juge. Ce discours est un acte d'accusation et de libération. Sont assignés quelques ténors de la civilisation blanche et de son idéologie mystifiante, l'Humanisme formel et froid. En pleine lumière sont exposées d'horribles réalités : la barbarie du colonisateur et le malheur du colonisé, le fait même de la colonisation qui n'est qu'une machine exploiteuse d'hommes et déshumanisante, une machine à détruire des civilisations qui étaient belles, dignes et fraternelles. C'est la première fois qu'avec cette force est proclamée, face à l'Occident, la valeur des cultures nègres. Mais la violence de la pureté du cri sont à la mesure d'une grande exigence, ce texte chaud, à chaque instant, témoigne du souci des hommes, d'une authentique universalité humaine. Il s'inscrit dans la lignée de ces textes majeurs qui ne cessent de réveiller en chacun de nous la générosité de la lucidité révolutionnaires. Le Discours sur le colonialisme est suivi du Discours sur la Négritude, qu'Aimé Césaire a prononcé à l'Université Internationale de Floride (Miami), en 1987.

Similar to the other countries discussed in this volume, elite dominance over mass media has been a main characteristic of Filipino history. Foreign-educated Filipino intellectuals from wealthy families founded the early periodicals that demanded reform and/or independence from Spanish colonization in the late nineteenth century (Anderson 1983 ). Today, ‘old rich’ landowning families own and operate television networks, radio stations, and newspapers not only as part of prestigious and profi table media conglomerates, but also in connection with their interests in industries as varied as oil and agriculture to insurance, shipping, and mining.

Incisive analyses of mass media - including such forms as talk shows, MTV, the Internet, soap operas, television sitcoms, dramatic series, pornography, and advertising-enable this provocative third edition of Gender, Race and Class in Media to engage students in critical mass media scholarship. Issues of power related to gender, race, and class are integrated into a wide range of articles examining the economic and cultural implications of mass media as institutions, including the political economy of media production, textual analysis, and media consumption. Throughout, Gender, Race and Class in Media examines the mass media as economic and cultural institutions that shape our social identities, especially in regard to gender, race, and class.

Race, Gender, and Deviance in Xbox Live provides a much-needed theoretical framework for examining deviant behavior and deviant bodies within one of the largest virtual gaming communities—Xbox Live. Previous research on video games has focused mostly on violence and examining violent behavior resulting from consuming this medium. This limited scope has skewed criminologists' understanding of video games and video game culture. Xbox Live has proven to be more than just a gaming platform for users. It has evolved into a multimedia entertainment outlet for more than 20 million users. This book examines the nature of social interactions within Xbox Live, which are often riddled with deviant behavior, including but not limited to racism and sexism. The text situates video games within a hegemonic framework deploying whiteness and masculinity as the norm. The experiences of the marginalized bodies are situated within the framework of deviance as they fail to conform to the hegemonic norm and become victims of racism, sexism, and other types of harassment.

This landmark work of history and theory challenges every accepted notion about the nature of black women’s lives. Ain’t I A Woman examines the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the historic devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism within the recent women’s movement, and black women’s involvement with feminism. hooks refutes the antifeminist claim that black women are not victims of sexist oppression nor in need of an autonomous women’s movement. She pushes feminist dialogue to new limits by claiming that all progressive struggles are significant only when they take place within a broadly defined feminist movement which takes as its starting point that race, class, and sex are immutable facts of human existence. bell hooks’ insight as a black woman and a feminist extends the scope of feminist theory and practice for us all, and marks the emergence of a revitalized feminism in the 1980s.

"In the critical essays collected in Black Looks, bell hooks interrogates old narratives and argues for alternative ways to look at blackness, black subjectivity, and whiteness. Her focus is on spectatorship--in particular, the way blackness and black people are experienced in literature, music, television, and especially film--and her aim is to create a radical intervention into the way we talk about race and representation. As she describes: 'The essays in Black Looks are meant to challenge and unsettle, to disrupt and subvert.' As students, scholars, activists, intellectuals, and any other readers who have engaged with the book since its original release in 1992 can attest, that's exactly what these pieces do"(Provided by publisher)

The construction of a problem, be it a crisis or a moral panic, is an attempt of policing and control, for the maintenance of hegemony and authority (Hall et al. 1978 ). A problem emerges as a problem only when it is out of its proper place, just like dirt becomes dirt only when it is not properly placed in the earth. The elimination of dirt is necessary in maintaining the cleanliness of the social order (Douglas 2002 ). In other words, it is the need for a particular social arrangement that constitutes the existence of a problem. Taiyu, the lingua franca of the Taiwanese, became a problem of dialect (called Minnanyu) to be eliminated when the KMT colonial regime moved to Taiwan, building it as a Chinese nation and instituting Mandarin as the national language. Television is central to the building of the Chinese nation. Taiyu serial dramas were broadcast soon after the fi rst network was established in 1962, but have been constructed as the most problematic and debased genre since the early 1970s when the second TV station, CTV (1969), and the third, CTS (1971), were established and used serial drama to compete for profi t. Accusations directed at the poverty of its quality and the vulgarity of the audiences have characterized mainstream criticisms and constructions of Taiyu serial dramas as problems from the 1970s to the present. This chapter investigates not only the how and what but also the why of this problem-construction, as an attempt to understand the power mechanisms at work in struggling for hegemonic control. It charts two historical moments – the 1970s and from the 1990s to the present – when language has played a signifi cant role in the articulations of serial dramas as problems and explores the changing political, economic and cultural forces that situate them as problems worthy of discussion. I argue that the history of this problem-making demonstrates the centrality of Chinese culture in political domination through cultural means, with ethnic/class politics playing a central role in the maintenance of a hierarchical social order. In the 1970s, Chinese culture was used to create ethnic/class divisions within Taiwan while simultaneously creating the illusion of a symbolic whole under the name of the Republic of China. However, since the 1990s, and intensifying after the 2000s, with the entanglement of democratization and neoliberalization in Taiwan and the rise of China, the ethnic/class tension is not just complicated by confl icted national identifi cations and Chinese culturepromoted by both the KMT Party’s Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China, but also for unifi cation purposes. While democratization, which involved the search for Taiwanese identity, led to the rise of Taiyu-based Hsiangtu drama, the neoliberal defi nition of culture as economic resource, which consecrates Chinese culture through capital investment, facilitates this unifi cation process while creating further ethnic/class/national identity divisions within Taiwan. The result is a disparaging of Taiyu-based culture in general and, in particular, Taiyu serial drama as a problem to be reformed.

This paper proposes a theoretical framework with which to dis- cuss the critical engagement of media art projects in Second Life with racialized self-representation, fashion and ethnic dress. Ex- amining Montreal-based Mohawk artist Skawennati’s machinima series, TimeTravellerTM (2008-13), a project of self- determination, survivance and Indigenous futurity, it argues the critically-aware act of ‘virtually self-fashioning’ racialized born- digital identities, or virtual ethnicities, disrupts ways in which today’s vast proliferation of self-technologies enabling the crea- tion, recreation and management of multiple selves, would other- wise remain complicit with neoliberal colour-blind racism

Korea was the fifteenth country in the world to start television broadcasting when it first launched in Seoul in 1956. Since then, the structure, content and policies concerning Korean television have continuously transformed, due largely to changing contextual circumstances such as wide-ranging socio-political democratization and the rise of the neoliberal global economic system and digital technologies. Up until the 1980s, the oligopolistic structure of the two public broadcasting networks  – Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) and Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC)  – dominated the broadcasting market. However the landscape has dramatically changed since the early 1990s, with 11 newly launched commercial terrestrial broadcasting channels (including Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) in December 1991) and 153 cable channels when the multichannel television era began (Jin 2005 : 1). A digital satellite television system called Skylife was launched in March 2002, and airs 176 channels at the time of writing. Such changes stem from the shift in the domestic political climate where liberalization and privatization were promoted in assertively practiced neoliberal reform movement in the early 1980s, as well as changes in the global cultural industry environments based largely on globalization and the development of digital technologies. This chapter explores democratization, transnationalization and digitalization, three active factors within Korean television broadcasting by analysing changes and shifts in popular music programmes.

In 1980, Hong Kong’s commercial Television Broadcast Limited (TVB) television drama The Bund ( 上海滩 ) was popularly received in the city as well as in South-East Asia and the broader Chinese diaspora. Set in the cosmopolitan treaty port of Shanghai in the 1920s, The Bund revolves around the violent ascent of a coolie (Ray Lui) and a disillusioned student activist (Chow Yun-Fat) to become prominent mobsters. Not only were two sequels made within that year, but this historical gangster drama has been repeatedly resurrected in television dramas and fi lms, including Chow’s redux, The Last Tycoon ( 大上海 ), three decades later in 2012. From karaoke lounges to social media sites, theme songs of The Bund remain popular more than three decades after the dramas were screened . With music composed by Joseph Koo, lyrics by Wong Jim and sung by Frances Yip, the main and supplementary theme songs refl ected the intimate role of the Hong Kong-based contemporary Cantonese popular music, or Canto-pop, in cultivating a more memorable and enduring televisual culture. With the smooth synchronization of Koo’s classical music with the undulating pitch of Yip, the song articulates the unpredictable tribulations of the changing fortunes in the treaty-port of Shanghai in the interwar years. To a certain extent, it is also a narrative that reminds viewers in Hong Kong and beyond of similar socio-political and historical predicaments.

Writing a history of Indian television immediately begs the question, how do we want it read? Exhaustive chronological treatments anchor the field (Kumar 2000 ), ideological examinations reveal a Hindu-centric nation with serious consequences for religious and gender minorities (Rajagopal 1996 ; Mitra 1993 ; Van der Veer 1997 ), development analyses demonstrate the failures of a socialist state (F ü risch and Shrikhande 2007 ), and audience studies reveal complex negotiations among multiple identity positions (Mankekar 1999 ). These critical approaches to the study of television in India rightly expose power differentials that facilitate, through the centuries, the inequities of interwoven structures of imperialism, colonialism, casteism, and capitalist patriarchy. Most importantly, they highlight the chronic condition of distrust in postcolonial societies, making it highly challenging to legitimize profi table connections to global circuits as they modernize under the very conditions that once constrained them.

As in historical accounts, empire in video games too is concerned with the acquisition of geographical space. Like the splash of red marking the stretch of the British Empire on Victorian world maps, video games that let one play at empire are also obsessed with stamping the imperialist authority of ‘your’ nation on their in-game maps. Video game empires too work on the necessary logic of spatial expansion connected with which is the necessity to remove the ‘fog’ which prevents the player’s ‘line of sight’ from accessing information about surrounding areas. The focus on cartography and surveying in British Raj India is a useful comparison. Although much scholarship exists around the representations of the spatiality of Empire in more traditional media, there is little that addresses the video game representations of Empire. This article is about the representation and experience of space in conceptions of Empire vis-à-vis in empire-building video games, as understood in terms of both cartography and the lived experience of space. It argues that although empire-building video games are largely framed within the western imperialist discourses, the very nature of gameplay itself challenges these set notions – in a way remediating the ambiguity and anxieties of the representations of empire and its spatial constructs in earlier media.

Written by one of the foremost scholars of African art and featuring more than 125 color images, Postcolonial Modernism chronicles the emergence of artistic modernism in Nigeria in the heady years surrounding political independence in 1960.

En Afrique en général et au Cameroun en particulier, posséder une console de jeux vidéo n’est pas à la portée de tout le monde. Les jeunes puisque ce sont eux qui les affectionnent particulièrement, qui en possèdent une, font donc souvent appel à leurs pairs afin qu’ensemble, ils puissent s’amuser. L’espace où les jeunes jouent aux jeux vidéo devient de ce fait un espace où ces derniers s’affirment en tant que groupe à part entière. C’est un espace qui leur permet de se démarquer des adultes qui, le plus souvent dénigrent, voire méprisent cette activité ludique. Les jeunes y créent ainsi des « ethnométhodes » et développent une solidarité mécanique. Jouer aux jeux vidéo dans ce contexte n’est plus simplement une activité de loisir. L’espace de jeu devient un espace où se créent de nouvelles relations et où se raffermissent les anciennes. Mais également, un espace où se développent l ’esprit de compétition et corrélativement même des conflits. Celui avec qui on s’amuse aux jeux vidéo devient celui à qui on se confie, avec qui on partage ses joies et ses peines. La console de jeux n’ « appartient » plus à celui qui l ’a achetée, mais à tous ceux qui la jouent. Il n’est donc pas rare qu’elle s’exporte du domicile de son propriétaire pour le domicile d ’un autre adolescent. Il faut également préciser que le jeu vidéo reste en négroculture une activité essentiellement masculine ; l ’espace de jeu est donc le fief du garçon et les filles n’ont rien à y faire. Le jeu vidéo développe ainsi un certain machisme, une fierté d ’être homme plutôt que femme. Dans ce contexte, on peut noter une sorte de détribalisation. L’obédience ethnique de tout un chacun s’estompe pour laisser place à une société des jeunes tout court. Le jeu vidéo fait donc tomber les barrières raciales, tribales, ethniques. Et même si on peut y noter des effets pervers, ce qui est normal, puisque aucun système culturel n’est parfait, les jeux vidéo en contexte camerounais développent chez les adolescents le sentiment d ’appartenance à une même classe d ’âge.

This thesis argues that photography is tainted with ingrained racist ideologies that have been present since its earliest inception in 1839. It considers the act of photographing the Other as a site of Western violence, myth, fantasy and disavowal. It examines archival images through the prism of race, representation and human rights with the aim of extracting new meanings that bring the Other into focus. This is done by reading the images both against the politics of the time in which they were made and as contemporary objects at work in the political and cultural present. The thesis makes the case that photography is burdened with ideological fault-lines concerning race and rights. The fault-lines have been forged by cultural and colonial violence resulting in Western scopic regimes that have dominated and fixed the Other within an inescapable set of Western epistemologies that have been used to serve and enhance imperial perspectives on race. I argue that these perspectives are still active within the Western mindset manifest as benign acts of photographic empathy that work to ultimately bolster Western hegemonies and economies. This thesis is based on 25 years of experience as a researcher and curator of international photography exhibitions, direct research into archives in different continental settings, the presentation of papers in a variety of national and international contexts, and interviews withphotographers, curators and academics. My hypothesis is that the history of photography can only be complete if the voice of the subaltern is made critically present within it, so allowing us to engage with important political racial memory work that can help us re-read the past and reconfigure different meanings concerning history, race, rights and human recognition in the present. I argue that photography requires decolonising work to be carried out on its history. I propose that if we do not recognise the historical and political conjunctures of racial politics at work within photography and the effects on those that have been culturally erased, made invisible or less than human by such images, then we remain hemmed within established orthodoxies of colonial thought concerning the racialised body, the subaltern and the politics of human recognition.

One may argue that Chinese television has already received more than its fair share of attention in the study of Chinese media. As compared with radio and cinema, which developed in the socialist era (1949-78), television has been seen as the dominant medium in the decades of marketization and economic reforms since the late 1970s (Zhu and Berry 2008 ). Television has been studied as a metonym for the ongoing tension and complicity between the Chinese state and the market (e.g., Zhao 1998 ; 2008a) and as a metaphor for the contradictions between a legacy of socialist rhetoric and ethos and a neoliberal market agenda. It is precisely these contradictions that make up what is often referred to as the ‘Chinese characteristics’ (Zhao 2008a; Sun and Zhao 2009 ) of China’s television culture.

Television dramas, both serials and series, have been a long-term recruiter of large-scale national audiences for television broadcasters as they are potentially able to speak to their audience in affective and imaginative ways (Chan 2011 ; Sun and Gorfi nkel 2014). Usually it is the locally produced drama that resonates most with a national audience, the familiarity of the setting and context often carrying signifi cant implications for social and sometimes political life (Blandford et al. 2011 , Chan 2011 ). These television texts can pick up on popular strands of discourses in the public sphere and succeed in establishing a form of dialogue with audiences; in the instances examined in this chapter, this dialogue is about the formation of national identities or citizenships. There is good reason, then, for broadcasters and governments to attempt to use television drama to educate and persuade, although Sugg and Power ( 2011 : 26-7), long-term drama producers at the BBC World Service Trust, warn that for dramas to succeed in this manner, they first have to be entertaining, otherwise they are unlikely to generate an audience in the fi rst place. Audiences are not easily fooled and can sniff out the difference between being entertained and being preached at in a didactic way. This chapter deals with a period in the history of Singapore where television historical drama played a signifi cant role in creating a national past upon which the promotion of a distinctive national identity might be based. In addition to a consideration of a selection of drama series themselves, the chapter draws upon interviews where viewers are encouraged to share their memories of these dramas, and the part they played in the construction of a Singaporean identity.

Video games have become a global industry, and their history spans dozens of national industries where foreign imports compete with domestic productions, legitimate industry contends with piracy, and national identity faces the global marketplace. This volume describes video game history and culture across every continent, with essays covering areas as disparate and far-flung as Argentina and Thailand, Hungary and Indonesia, Iran and Ireland.