I promised the twin worlds of Victoriana and Academia, so I’d better pay up before this e-journal degenerates into hilarious accounts of weekend shopping (although I’m going to California towards the end of the month, prime territory for Curb Your Enthusiasm style misadventure). So the first instalment – which, incidentally, grows week by week into a partwork you and your family will treasure – is a sneak preview of material to be included in my next academic appearance, speaking at the Science Fiction and the Canon conference at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, on 24th March. Why not bag yourself a seat at the conference website here?:
http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/faculties/alss/deps/english_media/conference.html
So, "Dick/ens: Bleak House and the Dystopia of Blade Runner." I was so tempted to call this paper "‘It’s too bad she won’t live: but then again, who does?’: Esther Summerson as Replicant," but that wouldn’t have quite suited what I’m actually going to be talking about. What I am arguing will have to remain a mystery save for those who stump up to attend the conference. Although a tiny clue is that another rejected title was "Like Tears in Rain." In the end, I went for Dick/ens because it’s a beautiful half pun (or hun) and has superfluous typography in the title. Incidentally, at this year’s MLA convention, Joseph Valente gave a paper on academic titles discussing such flagrant use of punctuation. That particular panel was the most notorious of this year’s event, thanks to Paul Morrison’s infamous "Is the Rectum a Text?" I happened to be sitting behind a journalist at the time, so if you read of this panel in the American press (no doubt as an example of the theoretical decadence of the MLA), I was actually there. It’s something to tell the grandchildren.
Anyway, my trailer for the Cambridge conference constitutes an illustration from Punch in 1850 (I'm momentarily at a loss for a more specific reference than that, but it's on the way). The illustration reveals the extent of advertising in mid-nineteenth-century London, something I think a lot of people are apt to see as a modern, or even postmodern development (I see Microsoft Word dislikes the word postmodern, which is surprising since ‘Help’ seems to have been constructed by Jacques Derrida). Although the sensory overload (in the fashionable phrase) of street advertising really got going towards the end of the nineteenth century, here it's clearly already on the way. Like the most intriguing images, there are so many questions. Why are all the Ns reversed on the advertising cart except for those in "Van Dieman's Land" (that is, Tasmania, indicating a mid-Victorian liking for Antipodean flavoured sensationalism)? What's going on with the surprised looking man on the left (who, I must admit, looks like he's performing some sort of levitation trick - oh yes, magic is something else that's going to crop up a lot here as well)? Are those peaches in the girl's basket, and is there any psychoanalytic mileage in her fruity bounty, as well as what seems to be at least a police caution? As for my favourite part, I'm stuck between the two men advertising mixed somethings, and the poster on the far left. There's something amusing about the sudden leap from modern visual entertainment technologies to the more enduring aesthetic of the freakshow. I wonder if it would have had a similar effect to a poster today promising IMAX... Nintendo Wii... The Bearded Lady. Nonetheless, I hope that DIORAMA PANORAMA CYCLORAMA DWARF! will soon become a popular drinking game at the MLA convention.
It does say tour dates at the top; you can see me live at Cambridge on 24th March, before I head off to California on the 25th… and my next public appearance will be at the Daphne du Maurier International Centenary Conference, Fowey, 10th-11th May. Get your seats booked at:
http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/faculties/alss/deps/english_media/conference.html
So, "Dick/ens: Bleak House and the Dystopia of Blade Runner." I was so tempted to call this paper "‘It’s too bad she won’t live: but then again, who does?’: Esther Summerson as Replicant," but that wouldn’t have quite suited what I’m actually going to be talking about. What I am arguing will have to remain a mystery save for those who stump up to attend the conference. Although a tiny clue is that another rejected title was "Like Tears in Rain." In the end, I went for Dick/ens because it’s a beautiful half pun (or hun) and has superfluous typography in the title. Incidentally, at this year’s MLA convention, Joseph Valente gave a paper on academic titles discussing such flagrant use of punctuation. That particular panel was the most notorious of this year’s event, thanks to Paul Morrison’s infamous "Is the Rectum a Text?" I happened to be sitting behind a journalist at the time, so if you read of this panel in the American press (no doubt as an example of the theoretical decadence of the MLA), I was actually there. It’s something to tell the grandchildren.
Anyway, my trailer for the Cambridge conference constitutes an illustration from Punch in 1850 (I'm momentarily at a loss for a more specific reference than that, but it's on the way). The illustration reveals the extent of advertising in mid-nineteenth-century London, something I think a lot of people are apt to see as a modern, or even postmodern development (I see Microsoft Word dislikes the word postmodern, which is surprising since ‘Help’ seems to have been constructed by Jacques Derrida). Although the sensory overload (in the fashionable phrase) of street advertising really got going towards the end of the nineteenth century, here it's clearly already on the way. Like the most intriguing images, there are so many questions. Why are all the Ns reversed on the advertising cart except for those in "Van Dieman's Land" (that is, Tasmania, indicating a mid-Victorian liking for Antipodean flavoured sensationalism)? What's going on with the surprised looking man on the left (who, I must admit, looks like he's performing some sort of levitation trick - oh yes, magic is something else that's going to crop up a lot here as well)? Are those peaches in the girl's basket, and is there any psychoanalytic mileage in her fruity bounty, as well as what seems to be at least a police caution? As for my favourite part, I'm stuck between the two men advertising mixed somethings, and the poster on the far left. There's something amusing about the sudden leap from modern visual entertainment technologies to the more enduring aesthetic of the freakshow. I wonder if it would have had a similar effect to a poster today promising IMAX... Nintendo Wii... The Bearded Lady. Nonetheless, I hope that DIORAMA PANORAMA CYCLORAMA DWARF! will soon become a popular drinking game at the MLA convention.
It does say tour dates at the top; you can see me live at Cambridge on 24th March, before I head off to California on the 25th… and my next public appearance will be at the Daphne du Maurier International Centenary Conference, Fowey, 10th-11th May. Get your seats booked at:
This is being organised in association with the annual Daphne du Maurier Festival of Arts and Literature, which means that in one sense I’m on the same bill as Jethro Tull. More of them later.
1 comment:
I hope that "Diorama Panorama Cyclorama Dwarf!" will soon be the name of a hard rock band. Preferably with the exclamation mark (cf "God Speed You, Black Emperor!").
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