The work contained in this portfolio was produced during my

time in Stirling University (Scotland) while coursing the modules

People and Power: Politics of the British Isles, International

Politics and Meaning and Representation.

It contains:

1. Nation or valance: Why do voters support the SNP? – An essay dealing with the

reasons for the increased support for the SNP party.

2. Is British Politics dominated by Euroscepticism? – Polished notes on the subject

written for an in-class essay.

3. Defrosting the balance of power – An essay about the role of power in

nowadays international politics

4. Charles Dickens: The realist rebel – An essay that analyzes Charles Dickens novel

Hard Times and its relationship with Realism

5. The tentacular extensions of Disney – Essay about theories of philosopher Jean

Baudrillard, focusing on Simulacra and Simulation and the concept of the

Hyperreal, relating it to film analysis of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The

Curse of the Black Pearl

STIRLING UNIVERSITY

ESSAY PORTFOLIO

Autum – Winter 2013

Albert Guasch Rafael

Student ID: 2228923 12th October 2013 People and Power: Politics of the British Isles

Nation or valance: Why do voters support the SNP?

Introduction

The story of the Scottish National Party (SNP from now on) is one of patience and

doing things step by step. Since its founding, the SNP has not always been taken

seriously. Even after Devolution, with a Labour and Liberal Democratic majority in

the Scottish Parliament, the nationalistic question in Scotland seemed to be

successfully dealt with. As pointed out in McCrone (2012, p. 69) “the Labour party in

Scotland thought it had stymied the nationalists when the Parliament was designed

in the late 1990’s by adopting the additional member system which made it almost

impossible for any party to get an overall majority”. So in the regional elections of

2007, when the SNP surpassed Labour, and even more in 2011, when it got a

comfortable majority, shock and doubt were the norm among journalists, scholars

and political analysts.

Consequently, we can assess that a profound change in voter behaviour has taken

place in Scotland this past decade. When this sort of phenomena occurs in politics,

we are inclined to examine the party’s manifesto and try to discover the reasons for

the SNP’s love affair with the voters. We will evaluate the importance of the party’s

core program, an independent state for Scotland, and whether their center-left

approach has beaten up Labour in their own arena. Finally, we’ll take a look at

whether valence plays an important role in Scottish Politics. The aim is to shed some

light on the reasons for this increased support to the SNP.

SNP’s success or Labour’s failure?

The story of SNP’s success in the 2007 Scottish elections is also the story of Labour’s

failure, a party that had dominated Holyrood since Devolution. In Jones (2007, p. 7-

8) the journalist argues that Labour’s campaign was quite a messy one. The Labour

Party was suffering the sequels of Westminster's government and the controversial

support for the war in Iraq was still a fresh collective memory. Moreover, their

hierarchy was divided and their strategy for conquering seats unclear.

In contrast, as Jones himself points out Jones (2007, p.11-14), the SNP appeared

as fresh as New Labour in 1997 (they were helped by Gordon Guthrie, a former

Labour supporter who had engineered part of New Labour’s renovation). In short

terms, the SNP would neither focus on just the Independence issue, nor exclusively

in the policies derived from Devolution; it would just skillfully play both sides. Jones's

paper also grants a high deal of importance to the fact that the SNP planned their

campaign early on the term, a clear contrast with a Labour party that was lost in the

desert and randomly trying all directions to achieve their goals. It also takes into

account Alex Salmond as a positive force within the SNP’s appeal to voters.

All political parties are allowed to have a bad campaign now and then, but Labour

did not bounce back in the 2011 election. We live in an era of class dealignment and

dissolution of ideologies. In consequence, both Labour and the SNP stand firmly in

the center with a soft alignment on the left. Their stands on key issues such as health,

education or security don’t differ a great deal. When the New Labour shift to center

took place fifteen years ago, the SNP embraced a similar change. Nonetheless,

voters gave the SNP a chance in 2007 and renovated their trust in the 2011 election,

when Labour has been the opposition and thus was in a better starting point to

conquer seats. Then, the reasons for SNP’s support, might be more earthly than

ideological.

In order to assess the extent of Labour’s ongoing drama in Scotland, we are going

to take a look at their results in the 2010 elections. Mitchell and Der Zwet (2010, p.

710) provide the election result and reach the conclusion that the Scottish electorate

behave differently in Westminster and Holyrood elections. Labour won a significant

42% of the vote, while the SNP managed a poor 19.9%. A meager performance

compared with the turnout in Holyrood elections. Politicians in the Labour party

breathed out.

The results seemed to indicate at the time that Labour might take power back in

Scotland, but in 2011 the SNP made them bite the dust again by winning a

comfortable majority. Therefore, this result adds to the point that the Scottish

electorate perceives Westminster elections rather differently than Holyrood elections

and that the extent of the SNP’s rise is limited to regional politics.

The meaning of Devolution

We can now comprehend how important Devolution has been to the SNP. While the

Westminster parties at the time thought that Devolution would calm Scottish calls for

independence and self-government, the SNP saw it as a step towards achieving

these same goals. Now the nationalists have a platform where they can be agenda

settlers instead of a small voice in a big singing chorus; a tool also to achieve the

desired goal of independence. Whether this end up being true or not might unravel

soon enough, but the important point here is that a majority of Scottish voters think

that the SNP is the best party to defend their interests in the regional parliament.

Another consequence of Devolution is that Scottish people believe that whoever they

put into power in Holyrood will make a significant effect in their lives. Johns et al.

(2009, p. 214) provides data which indicates that most of the Scottish people attribute

a great deal of responsibility on key issues such as law and order, health, education

and environment to Holyrood rather than Westminster, with the economy being the

only relevant exception. Since Scotland holds more decentralized powers than, for

example, any French region, the voters are capable of evaluating substantial

differences between a Labour government and a SNP one in Scotland. The same

paper reaches the conclusion that the Scottish people don’t perceive much difference

between Labour and SNP in policymaking, except for the constitutional issue. And

although support for independence remains low and it’s not the core reason for the

SNP’s rise, polls indicate that the constitutional issue matters and that most of the

population supports a greater development in self-government. Thus, Labour’s

Britishness, whether it’s real or perceived by the voters, might take its toll on the

party.

As Laffin et al. (2007, p. 15) indicates in its conclusion, the Labour party is still

conceived as an English brand trying to make its own way in Scotland, instead of

reforming itself to create a genuine Scottish brand. The National Executive

Committee, based in Westminster, holds a great deal of power in intra-party affairs,

including key organizational issues that affect Scottish Labour. The authors suggest

that a federal reform of the party, with more “devolved” powers to the regional brand,

might help them dust off some of their britishness and improve their results in

Holyrood.

The role of valence

Valence as a key factor in modern British politics is a thoroughly researched and

commonly accepted theory. As parties come closer together in the left-right axis and

become more pragmatic, valence becomes more vital when voters cast their ballots.

They are ideologically unfaithful but vigilant of party performance. Do Scottish voters

behave like this? Firstly, to evaluate a government's valence you need to feel that

the policies it puts in place have an effect in your lives, and we have established that

above in regard to the Scottish parliament. Secondly, valence becomes a tricky

question when several parliaments affect the same territory: it’s difficult to draw a line

when granting responsibility. It’s part of nowadays political game in Scotland.

According to Johns et al (2013, p. 163) when we downsize the role of the

constitutional issue, valance is the main explanation for SNP’s prominence in

Scotland this past two terms. As pointed out, while support for independence has

been generally flat from 2003 and 2011, SNP’s support has more than doubled.

Conclusion

If we agree upon a downsized role of independentism within the SNP’s voters’

preferences we reach the conclusion that valence is the key factor to understand why

voters turned massively to the SNP. In 2007 they successfully took advantage of

Labour’s wounds and finished it off in 2011, although the results in 2010 suggest that

Scotland’s love affair with the party of the rose is still ongoing. In regional elections,

the Scottish people turned to their local brand. Labour’s intra-party system with a

leadership based in Westminster, as well as a greater affinity with Westminster

policies, makes them appear too British. Therefore, in 2007 Labour failed to deliver

in the terms of “Scottishness” and the SNP’s “Put Scotland First”-type of slogans

were just what the voters wanted to hear. Later on, the Scottish people voted even

more massively for the SNP and granted them a comfortable majority in an electoral

system naturally averse to them, mainly because the electorate thought they

performed well in government.

Without Devolution, the SNP would not have had a platform where playing the role

of “The True Scotsmen” were so profitable. It allowed them to set in the agenda their

long desired goal for an independence referendum: a risky issue where they gamble

much of their credibility, since not every SNP’s voter is an independence supporter.

The result on the referendum will be important in future elections, but the valence

effect will strengthen further because of the current majority government. It creates

no less than greater expectations for the events in years to come.

Bibliography

JOHNS, R., MITCHELL, J., CARMAN, C., 2013. Constitution or Competence? The

SNP’s Re-election in 2011. Political Studies, 61 (S1) pp. 158-178.

JOHNS, R., MITCHELL, J., DENVER, D., 2009. Valence Politics in Scotland:

Towards an Explanation of the 2007 Election. Political Studies, 57, pp. 207-233.

JONES, P., 2007. The Smooth Wooing: The SNP’s Victory in the 2007 Scottish

Parliament Elections. Scottish Affairs, 60, pp. 6-23.

LAFFIN, M., SHAW, E., 2007. British Devolution and the Labour Party: How a

National Party Adapts to Devolution. The British Journal of Politics and International

Relations, 9, pp. 55-72.

MCCRONE, D., 2012. Scotland Out the Union? The Rise and Rise of the

Nationalist Agenda. The Political Quarterly, 83 (1), pp. 69-76.

MITCHELL, J., VAN DER ZWET, A., 2010. A Catenaccio Game: the 2010 Election

in Scotland. Parliamentary Affairs, 63 (4), pp. 708-725.

Is British Politics dominated by Euroscepticism?

Previous notes for in-class essay.

In the 1950s when the European project that would evolve into the European Union

was set in motion, the UK had mixed feelings about it. Nowadays, sixty years later,

the country is a full member with some specificities, but it still cannot seem to make

up its mind on weather EU membership suits British interests or not.

Euroscepticism is still heavily embedded in the British minds and, as a consequence,

in the British parties. No party seems to be fully comfortable when dealing with

European issues because it provokes frustration and disunity.

Public opinion was already divided when an application for membership was

submitted by the MacMillan Conservative Government in 1962. Before the British

had a “wait and see “attitude on the European Community. The UK had a powerful

trading union with the Commonwealth countries and trade with continental partners

was not as important as it might be for France, for example. Being isolated from the

continent, and a natural relationship with the English speaking world, especially with

the US (in both culture and economic models) were also factors that, in a way, are

still valid nowadays when assessing this role of the awkward partner that plays the

UK in the Union.

The application resulted in a French veto on British membership by the De Gaulle

government, who thought that British membership would endanger the social Europe

the French wanted (with policies such as the Common Agricultural Policies). The

tension between a social Europe and a more liberal-based in the UK model is crucial

to understand British Euroscepticism. For example, in the 1980s, the Labour Party

was strongly divided on the European issue. It was French President of the European

Commission Jaques Delors intervention promising labour regulation in Europe that

united the party to accepting the EU.

Shortly after, it was the Conservative Party who seemed divided. The Thatcher

Government, while fully supporting the Common Market, was very wary of the new

wave of European integration: giving away sovereignty to the institutions, a common

currency… The Iron Lady, untamed by the British folk, was not going to be

domesticated by Eurocrats. But it was the Major Conservative Government who

negotiated an opt-out treatment for the UK in the Maastricht Treaty, which allows the

UK to be out of the Euro.

At that point, the Labour Party were facing renovation. New Labour and Tony Blair’s

Government brought the most pro-active British Government in Europe, helping to

implement the Lisbon Agenda and the Common Defense Policy. The war in Iraq,

though, brought up a certain cleavage with Europe during Blair´s second term.

Gordon Brown, seeking more coordination with the EU, even presented a list of five

criteria so that the UK would join the Euro someday. Nowadays, the Labour Party

has slightly shifted towards skepticism. While supporting British Membership in the

EU, the Labour Party can ask for renegotiation of terms if they wake up on the wrong

side of bed.

Nowadays the Conservative Party stands at least as divided as ever about Europe.

Although Cameron asked his own party to “stop banging on about Europe”, he has

suffered major rebellions by the Conservative backbenchers up to the point that they

forced to introduce an IN/OUT referendum in the future political agenda. In Europe,

Cameron has played the Eurosceptic himself when in negotiations for a new fiscal

compact treaty to save the Euro during the Euro Crisis he tried to impose more

special treatment for the UK in exchange for his non-veto, which he ended up

exercising. Sarkozy and Merkel, heavily criticized Cameron´s move. For the rest of

his term, Cameron doesn't seem to have any big role to play in Europe, which might

have made him more inclined to listen to the calls of the backbenchers for a IN/OUT

referendum.

To his own party´s pressure we might add the one exercised by UKIP, a niche party

born from a Tory split heavily focused on British Euroscepticism. UKIP has benefited

from the more proportional system in European elections to gain visibility and win

supporters on a national level. They are there to remind the Conservative Party that

if they become soft towards Europe, their voters might support this more populist

party.

The Liberal-Democrats have traditionally been the most European of the Major

British Parties but they are having a hard time to demonstrate it within the current

Cameron-Clegg coalition. Plus, they electorate is also taking more Eurosceptic

stands and their pro-Europe message is becoming more nuanced. Euphoria for EU

institutions is difficult to sell nowadays.

In the end, the parties are reflecting a general feeling in British Society. On the one

hand the British generally oppose to give more sovereignty to Brussels, maybe out

of a sense of proudness. We are talking about a country that achieved globalization

through and Empire much before than other European partners and still maintains a

consistent trading Union with former colonies. On the other hand there are major

economic tensions when London tries to blend with Brussels. Supporters of the neo-

liberal system of the city despise regulations imposed by Brussels and reject the

upcoming Financial Transaction Tax, currently being engineered in Brussels. Those

two key economic issues were the ones that Cameron tried to avoid for Britain when

negotiating the Fiscal compound treaty in 2011.

In more theoretical terms, the UK wishes for Europe to be an intergovernmental

union, that in which states retain most of the sovereignty and are the key players

through cooperation and joint-decision; whilst the general trend in continental Europe

is supranationalism, in which sovereignty is given away to a upper-level structure

capable of imposing decisions.

For mainstream British parties, the European issue seems more something they

have to cope with, rather than a comfortable filed for policymaking. It is a source of

permanent conflict, not only between parties, but between party members also. They

are only comfortable with it when they don’t have to talk about it. But when they do,

skepticism dominates the political debate.

ID: 2228923

POL9X3 – Introduction to International Politics

12th November 2013

Defrosting the balance of power

(How important is the concept of power for understanding contemporary

International Politics?)

Introduction

There was a time in which international relations were dominated mainly by

a quite simple law: survival of the fittest. War, conquest, protectorate,

genocide; the anarchic nature of international relations has been costly for

peoples and cultures worldwide. A handful of states became powerful enough

to extend their dominion across continents using a trick as old as power itself:

gunpoint diplomacy. This westphalian notion of power - derived from the

Peace of Westphalia that clarified the terms of sovereignty in a territory -

kick-started the concept of international relations. Nation-states became the

main international actors and were able to enforce decisions on weaker states

through military might or threatening diplomatic action. The creation of new

empires was set in motion. But empires come and empires go. Specifically,

we saw many of them go during the 19th and 20th century. The expansion

of democracy and nationalism sprung by Romanticism brought movements

such as the Springtime of the Nations, which lead to the introduction of new

players in the board of international relations. With fragmentation power

scattered, became less tangible. The 1945 post world war scenario introduced

even more players: international organizations which presented new

structures where power would also come into play. The arrival of the new

millennium set the end of US unipolarity, introducing an even more complex

and diffuse exercise of power. Therefore, power is not so much a matter of

gunpoint enforcement, although some of that remains; it has become, in this

present day, a rather sophisticated game to play.

In the present essay we will try to define a broader concept of power that

encompasses the intricacies of international relations nowadays and suggest

that, despite the more regulated framework within the anarchic nature of

international relations, power still plays a large role in the interaction of

nations worldwide.

Means to an end: power

We tend to find consensus in the academic world when we define power as

the ‘ability to influence the outcome of events’ (Heywood 2011: 210). In

contrast, we tend to find a widespread disagreement in its nature, its sources

and the means to exercise it.

There are two relevant contributions that must be highlighted when

addressing the question of power nowadays. The political scientist Joseph S.

Nye, introduced a crucial distinction between hard power and soft power in

his book Soft Power: The means to success in World Politics. While the term

hard power refers to the traditional notion that military and economic

strength is capable of influencing the behaviour of third parties; soft power is

defined as: “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics

because other countries - admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring

to its level of prosperity and openness - want to follow it” (Nye 2004: 5).

Some other characteristics of soft power, as stated by Nye, are the fact that

globalization, the sophistication of telecommunications and the global flow of

information increment it; as well as the fact that democratic states tend to

be more associated with soft power. Generally we can associate democracy

with the value of peace, meaning that a country might cease to use its military

to influence others; but it still seeks some arena in which it can exercise

power and defend its interests. Soft power is a substitute.

The values emanating from liberal Western democracies have been

successfully adopted by traditionally authoritarian countries, like the case of

many Latin American nations during the second half of the 20th century. As

a result, we can claim that Western nations exercised soft power and aided

these countries in getting rid of the chains of dictatorship. In a similar

example, the European Union bases his system of admission in soft power: if

a country subscribes to EU values, there are many attractive advantages

when joining the Union, although no nation is forced to do so. Moreover, the

EU also helped many southern and eastern European nations get rid of

dictatorship with the promise of admission.

Soft power offers a new angle from which we can view the exercise of power

in international politics nowadays. But some authors find the duality between

soft and hard power too constraining. Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall

provide in their essay Power in International Politics a taxonomy with up to

four theoretical concepts to assess the exercise of power in this day and age.

According to this paper some forms of power have been overlooked and their

taxonomy includes “a consideration of how social structures and processes

generate different social capacities for actors to define and pursue their

interests and ideals” (Barnett and Duvall 2005: 42).

Barnett and Duvall offer their taxonomy according to two cores of social

relations of power, direct or diffuse. The first deals with clear relations and

connections between actors and how power is able to shape their outcomes.

The second one focuses on power existing without a direct relationship,

emanating instead from the rules of decision-making, social values, or

institutions (Barnett and Duvall 2005: 47-48).

From these two categories the authors offer a taxonomy of power consisting

of four words as shown in Figure 1 (Barnett and Duvall 2005: 49-57). Under

the category Compulsory Power fall many of the traditional westphalian

conceptions of power, much similar to the term hard power described above.

Structural power deals with how structures can affect the capabilities and

FIGURE 1. (Barnett and Duvall 2005: 48)

interests of states to exercise power. For instance, when the UN set a

framework - as limited as it might be - for international relations between

states, it shaped their behaviour after incorporating them in the structure of

the institution. When speaking of Institutional Power, we refer to the fact that

actors do not always deal directly one with each other, but sometimes third

actors - like institutions with their own set of values - stay in between and

affect the outcome of the particular relation between them. An example could

be the fact that austerity gets applied over Europe because the European

Institutions have similar set of values than the country that promotes them,

Germany, although the country itself does not have enough power within the

structure to enforce those policies. Finally, Barnett and Duvall propose the

term Productive Power to refer to how power in social actors can derive from

general knowledge or discursive practices. In this category fall those

explanations which believe that the Zionist movement was able to convince

the International Community of the necessity to create a state for the Jewish

people as a means of reparation from the atrocities committed in the

Holocaust.

The aforementioned theories will help us explain the importance of power

nowadays in international politics.

The new kids on the block

In recent years we have been flooded with headlines claiming that the balance

of power in the world is shifting. They might not take into account all the

subtle notions of power described by Barnett and Duvall, but surely the

distribution of it is very different than the one fifteen years ago, when there

was a big concentration of power in one Great Power: the U.S. To shed some

light on that period of unipolarity, we should take a look into The Stability of

a Unipolar World: “Unipolarity is durable and peaceful, and the chief threat is

U.S. failure to do enough. Possessing an undisputed preponderance of power,

the United States is freer than most states to disregard the international

system and its incentives” (Wohlforth 1999: 7).

The U.S. was able to concentrate so much power as to avoid compliance of

rules from international institutions because the country successfully

exercised many of the concepts exposed by Barnett and Duvall. It retained -

as it does now - the biggest military might in the world (Compulsory Power),

but it also enjoyed a good reputation as being the main bearer of the

successful system - that of economic liberalism and the free market against

the collapsed USSR - addressed in The End of History (Fukuyama 1989) (an

example of Productive Power). It also possessed a high degree of control

within structures of the international system: many of the Bretton Woods

institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, were created with heavy

influence by the U.S (Structural and Institutional Power). After the creation

of those institutions, the Americans exercised a great deal of soft power as

the most successful nation on earth, enhanced by the decline of the USSR as

a global power.

But Wolfforth’s analysis could not anticipate the events that would lead to a

certain weakening of the once most powerful nation on earth. After the

terrible images of the 9/11 attacks and the social shock that followed, we

could no longer see the U.S. as the beast that cannot suffer injuries. The

consequent war-like adventures of the Bush Administration in Afghanistan

and Iraq have weakened the country's reputation as it has not been able to

manage both post-war unrest and nation building as well as expected. The

2008 Meltdown weakened its economy and the reputation of its neoliberal

economic system.

In contrast, the emergent powers – popularly known as BRICS, an acronym

of their names (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), although more

could follow - have managed to introduce a story of success in the

International Relations arena. China lifted 23 million people out of poverty in

2012 (National Bureau of Statistics 2013), according to this governmental

source. The conditions of shanty towns in Brazil, commonly known as favelas,

are on the way to improving; more than half of the population living in them

can be considered middle class, while in 2001 only one third was considered

such (BusinessWeek 2012). More examples could follow. As a consequence,

these countries are becoming regional powers and their models are being

imitated by other developing nations (Productive Power). China has become

the second economy of the world after the U.S. and is increasing military

spending year after year (The Economist 2012). China is, therefore, balancing

internally which means that is increasing its capabilities to exercise hard

power over the U.S. As a consequence, the Obama Administration shifted the

focal point of its defense strategy from the Middle East to the Pacific to

counter China, in a movement known as the Pivot to Asia (Compulsory

Power). All of this results in emerging countries being able to increasingly

shape the outcomes of events according to their interests.

Conflict in the hall

Despite the rise of this multipolar world, seemingly threatening to the

interests of the U.S., the world’s first power still retains a great deal of

capacity to influence outcomes through international institutions

(Institutional and Structural Power). As said before, many of those were

created during the post-war consensus and are very favorable to the U.S.

interests. In a way, we could say that there is a certain frozen balance of

power that reflects the world of 1945, right after the World War Two. Like in

the UN, where the Permanent Five (U.S., China, Russia, U.K. and France) can

veto any initiative that comes from the UN Security Council or the General

Assembly. The IMF and the World Bank can be seen as tools that reflect the

interests and values of Western democracies, mainly the U.S.

As a response to the financial crisis of 2008, the countries suffering

meltdowns felt the need to coordinate certain areas of their economic policies

and created the G20 forum, which resulted in a new international institution

representing the industrialized and emergent states. As Geoffrey Garret

argues in his paper G2 in G20: China, the United states and the World after

the Global Financial Crisis ‘For China, the G20 represents the leading edge of

worldwide recognition of its status as a global power, between the old powers

of the 20th century and the rising powers of the 21st century’ (Garret 2010:

37). Although the balance of power in the Bretton Woods institutions is

frozen, and thus misrepresents these rising powers, it is not possible

nowadays to cast them away of the newly created institutions. The BRICS are

looking to defrost an outdated balance of power and be able to influence new

institutions.

Conclusion

Much has happened in the world to shape the current international relations

arena where power is not strictly a matter of armies, crusades and marriages;

but a softly institutionalized game in an anarchic environment still dominated

essentially by nation states. The arenas where actors tradeoff power

nowadays are halls, forums and assemblies; rather than palaces and

battlefields. Influence to force a particular outcome has become more

complex and diffuse but still plays a large role in the international arena.

Joseph Nye and Barnett and Duvall provide distinctive approaches that try to

categorize the numerous subtleties that implicate the exercise of power

nowadays. The fact that power is more hidden and constrained between legal

frameworks or emanates from discourses or general knowledge does not

mean that it is less relevant to present day international politics.

Be it the US concentrating too much power in the nineties or the BRICS and

other rising states trying to play a larger role in institutions, international

politics will always implicate power within a structure, an institution or the

result of military might.

Bibliography

Fukuyama, Francis (1989). ‘The End of History?’, The National Interest.

Retrieved November 11, 2013, from University of Alaska Fairbanks Web site:

http://ps321.community.uaf.edu/files/2012/10/Fukuyama-End-of-history-

article.pdf

Garrett, Geoffrey (2010). `G2 in G20, the United States and the World after

the Global Financial Crisis’, Global Policy, 1:1, pp. 29-39

Heywood, Andrew (2011). ‘Power and Twenty-first Century World Order’,

Global Politics, pp. 209-237

Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall (2005). ‘Power in International Politics’,

International Organization, 59, pp. 39-75

Miller, David and Petroff, Katerina (2012). ‘In Brazil’s Favelas, a Middle Class

Arises’, BusinessWeek. Retrieved November 11, 2013, from BusinessWeek

website: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-20/in-brazils-

favelas-a-middle-class-arises

National Bureau of Statistics (2013). ̀ Statistical Communiqué of the People's

Republic of China on the 2012 National Economic and Social Development’.

Retrieved November 11, 2013, from National Bureau of Statistics Web Site:

http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/newsandcomingevents/t20130222_402874

607.htm

Nye, Joseph (2004) Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New

York: Public Affairs)

The Economist (2012, 7 April /12 April) ‘The Dragon´s New Teeth’ Pg. 25

Wohlforth, William C. (1999). ‘The stability of a Unipolar World’, International

Security, 24, pp. 5-41

ID: 2228923

Meaning and Representation 28th October 2013

Charles Dickens: The realist rebel

An essay on Realism in “Hard Times”

“Yet it did seem (though not to [Gradgrind], for he saw nothing of it) as if fantastic

hope could take as strong a hold as Fact.” Charles Dickens, Hard Times

Introduction

“Be realistic: Demand the impossible” shouted the young men who started the May 68

uprising in France. The iconic quote, apparently contradictory, contains within itself a

duality extensively discussed several generations before the French revolutionaries took

the streets. The Age of Enlightenment rejected tradition but brought new gods for

humankind: knowledge, rationality, fact. The heirs of this school of thought considered

that they could live exclusively under their guidance and deny the opposite

counterparts: feeling, imagination, fancy. In a crucial highlight of the debate, Charles

Dickens wrote Hard Times, a novel that contains this very same debate within its core.

Dickens lived in a thriving era for the novel as a literary medium. It was also an era when

the thirst for empirical thought and a realistic depiction of the world had apprehended

many novel writers. In the current essay we will try to shed some light on the characters

and events that represent models of the empirical way and models for the idealist way

of looking at reality in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times. We will focus on two key characters

- the young Cecyl Jupe and her mentor and schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind - and the

events surrounding the initial quote.

Facts and fancy

The initial quote is taken from the eighth chapter of Charles Dickens Hard Times which

dwells with the education of Sissy Jupe. The young girl is adopted by the head teacher

of the local school, Thomas Gradgrind, after discovering that her father left her in

mysterious circumstances. In a rare moment of compassion, the head teacher decides

to look after the abandoned child and take care of her education. Under his protection,

Sissy is bombarded with an endless string of raw facts. It is what Thomas Gradgrind calls

education. But the young girl is not one that can take in so many chunks of figures,

statistics and categories. Instead, she is quite the imaginative type, and often escapes

from reality. She prefers to think herself as a person capable of changing the world

rather than sticking to conventions, even if she can only do that by any stretch of the

imagination.

The antagonism between the two characters is introduced at the very first scene of the

book1: “Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts

alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else”; a taste of the

doctrine one has to deal with in Mr Gradgrind’s school. The character has firmly

constructed his life philosophy upon these principles and neglects all interference of

anything that doesn’t originate in reason, such as art, taste, empathy, feeling... What Mr

Gradgrnid does in the school is some kind of social engineering while breeding his own

blindness into his pupils.

Sissy Jupe, a new pupil in school, is the daughter of a horsebreaker and has been

educated by circus people, who lack the kind of cold and strict knowledge that Gradgrind

cultivates, but are generous in the world of senses. She represents their values:

humanity, compassion, comradeship, empathy… Sissy’s imagination is never questioned

in her household, while Gradgrind sees the young girl’s feature as a bad seed, something

to root out from her character and her society. Through imagination, and probably also

because of her social status, Sissy has built up a capacity to imagine a better world.

Sissy’s father mysterious disappearance is left to the readers own imagination.

Gradgrind and Bounderby believe that he has left because he does not love Sissy

anymore; in their minds another proof that you cannot trust the lesser people. In

contrast, the girl remains hopeful that her father left her for a good reason and that he

might come back someday. Therefore, she keeps the bottle of the unguent for her

father’s muscles, a token of her faith.

When the drama unravels, Dickens seems to indicate that Sissy is some sort of remedy

for the preponderance of Gradgrind’s utilitarianism in society. She is continuously kind

towards Lisa, Gradgrinds daughter and even admires her cold knowledge; even though

in the beginning Lisa does not seem to care much for Sissy. Lisa herself encloses the

1 Charles Dickens, Had Times ( Oxford World’s Classics, 2008), Book I, Chapter I

tension between cold rationalism and warm imagination. Through the course of the

novel, she will come to terms with her utilitarian upbringing and realize that there is a

missing cog in the wheel; imagination. She is like an iceberg that melts parsimoniously

into a sea of self-awareness.

In another key scene of Hard Times, Sissy convinces the amoral Mr Harthouse to leave

town (Hard Times, Book III, Chapter II), given the pernicious consequences of his

presence. Harthouse is shocked by Sissy`s determination and he ultimately agrees to her

demands. The scene represents the ultimate triumph of Sissy’s skill: the good and

innocent girl is able to shape the established events as she convinces Harthouse, a key

piece in the drama, to leave. It is the established order being transformed through the

willpower of an idealist. . Peter Brooks conveys in “Realist vision” Sissy and Luisa’s

functionality as a character:

Luisa’s conversion is to be sure very much a commentary on the Gradgrinan philosophy and educational system propounded in the opening scenes, and the emergence of Sissy Jupe as the moral standard of the Gradgrind household an effective transvaluation of values.2

The duality implicit in the relationship between Gadgrind and Sissy can be understood

through a broader scope, outside the fictional world. The same discussion was taking

place in art during the 19th century. Realist artists, those who prefer to interpret the

world in an empirical way - and believe that objects are independent from sensatory

experience – took the opposite stand to idealists, those who prefer to interpret the

world through consciousness, feeling and mind.

Aesthetic Realism

The word Realism has several meanings depending on the discipline. In Charles Dickens’

Hard Times, many different kinds of Realism seem to converge. We have spoken above

of Realism understood as a philosophical and political concept, which is encapsulated in

the Thomas Gradgrind character. In philosophical terms, Realism is defined as the belief

that reality is ontologically independent from our perception and, in consequence,

everything can be measured, qualified and classified. In political discourse, Realism

2 Peter Brooks, Realist Vision (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 48-9

means to stick to existing structures and work within their limitations, instead of trying

to altering them.

In the 19th Century, novelists embraced the art currents derived from John Locke’s

empirical knowledge, which removed mind and spirit as guiding principles for cultural

movements. Writers tried to merge the empiric rules with literature in the novel

medium. Therefore, realism could also be understood as an aesthetic attitude towards

art.

Although Dickens is often categorized as a realist writer, he was not willing to abandon

literary techniques from other art currents such as metaphors, creative comparisons and

caricatures. This can be exemplified in different passages of the book: Gradgrind’s

description, Stephen Blackpool’s love for Rachel, etc. Let’s focus on the description of

Coketown in Hard Times (Hard Times, Book I, Chapter V):

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled.

In this passage we find categorization of the elements that form Coketown (the

chimneys, the bricks, machinery), but also the intention to communicate through

metaphors and imagery (smoke as serpents, “black like the painted face of a savage”).

In a way, it is as if Charles Dickens had anticipated the imminent visual revolution that

would arise with the development of photography. It is accepted knowledge that vision

is the most powerful sense; therefore we often say “I’ll believe it when I see it”.

When Charles Dickens and other realist writers describe and object or scenery, they

pretend to create the visual image of a whole through the atomized depiction of detail.

A renowned example is Balzac’s excruciating description of a cap in Madame Bovary.

Pam Morris explains discusses the detailed and visual description of Balzac’s prose in his

book Realism:

What is additionally new and distinctive in Balzac’s work is the compendious detail in which he grasps a historical milieu. Balzac, more than any other writer, developed the

pictorial quality of realism. Yet this visual element is not aiming simply at photographic mimetic effect; Balzac sees his world in an intensely historical way.3

So powerful is the visual imagery to the senses that, according to Susan Sontag,

photography created a new meaning of Realism:

What is written about a person or an event is frankly and interpretation, […] Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.4

Realist writers seemed to anticipate this shift in their literature. They were convinced

that through the visual we receive our most real experiences. Nevertheless, Charles

Dickens doesn’t avoid creative and imaginative metaphors in description of reality like

some of his colleges did.

Besides the visual effect, characters are crucial in every fictional form and realist novels

are no exception. Pam Morris claims in Realism (Morris, p.114) that realists tend to

individualize characters as much as possible to create the sense of truthfulness and

uniqueness of a real person. The search for a particular voice becomes of primary

importance in the quest for depicting reality truthfully. In Hard Times, Charles Dickens

attributes a great deal of symbolism to his characters, which inevitably undermines their

uniqueness. As the critic John Raymond Williams put it, Dickens purpose is to “dramatize

those social institutions and consequences which are not accessible to ordinary physical

observation”5. As we said, Sissy Jupe represents Idealism, while Bounderby and

Gradgrind represent rationalism and utilitarianism. James Harthouse represents some

sort of amoral nihilist who only works for personal gain and Mrs Sparsit symbolizes the

decadence of the aristocracy in an era dominated by the rational bourgeois. This strong

character-concept association takes control of the characters and doesn’t leave space

for the development of more unique voices. They feel like functional cogs of a big

machine, instead of real live characters.

3 Pam Morris, Realism (London and New York, Routledge, 2003) p. 61 4 Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin Group, 1978) p. 4 5 John Raymond Williams, The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence (The Hogart Press, 1984) pp. 33-4

A social reading of Hard Times

As we read the novel, we find it obvious that Charles Dickens is sympathetic with the set

of characters which can be defined as idealists. In a way, they win the match. This is

evidenced in the resolution of the different threads that form the plot: Lisa and

Gradgrind’s self-realization, Tom’s downfall as someone who is not aware of his

imperfections, Sissy forcing Harthouse’s exile and even we can interpret Stephen

Blackpool’s death as the ultimate victim of a utilitarian society.

Stephen Blackpool, a typical English factory worker, represents a desire of prosperity to

which the 19th Century working class aspired. His is the most tragic outcome of Hard

Times. Opposed to Stephen, we are presented with Slackbridge, the union’s

representative in Bounderby’s factory, who seems to pursue a selfish agenda when

igniting an uprising. Their confrontation causes Stephen layoff and sets in motion the

events leading up to his death.

In the present essay, we have focused in the literary and philosophical side of Hard

Times, but many authors have outlined several analysis of the novel focused on its social

intricacies. In the paper Dickens Genera Mixta, Nil Clausson attributes the adjective

“dystopian”6 to Hard Times, based on the works of the academic literary critic Northrop

Frye. The novel might then be understood as a hyperbole of the country’s social situation

in the 19th Century. Benjamin Disraeli, a Prime Minister himself, defined it as two-nation;

thus conveying the great inequalities between the capitalist foe and the working class

mass. The social interpretation of Hard Times, combined with the anti-utilitarian

assertion of the novel makes us think that Charles Dickens thought that 19th Century

England had undergone a harmful utilitarian course and that simple folks like Stephen

or Sissy where either a cure for the status quo or the last remnant of a better era.

Conclusion

So far we have established the tension between Idealism and Realism as a philosophical

discourse in the core of Hard Times. We have also conveyed its strange mixture of the

aesthetical effect typical of Realism and the imaginative prose by Charles Dickens. Then

6 Nil Clausson, “Dickens’s Genera Mixta: What Kind of a Novel is Hard Times?”, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 52, Issue 2, 2010, p. 157-180, p.166

we have established Charles Dickens’s critique of utilitarianism and social inequality in

19th Century England. We might ask, as a conclusion, whether there is a connection

between all these observations.

Charles Dickens used to put his written word at the service of social change. Peter Brooks

points out in Realist Vision (Brooks, p.42) regarding Dickens style:

The narratorial language is constantly saying to Coketown, as to Gradgrind and company, I am not a prisoner of your system, I can transform it, soar above it, through the imaginative resources of my prose.

In Hard Times one of the most quoted authors among the realist gang rebels against

aesthetic Realism itself, the same way his characters rebel in the plot against political

and philosophical Realism and its most exaggerated expression; utilitarianism. We can

establish Dickens as a playful writer and Hard Times as some sort of moral tale.

Art as mimesis or representation often drifts among many different concepts and

aesthetical possibilities. It’s part of the reader’s challenge and the writer’s skill. There

are endless possible combinations by which one can express a particular meaning. Hard

Times plays with different concepts and mixes discourse and aesthetics to tell a moral

tale. It contains a timeless discourse that was used in the French communes in 1968 and

still echoes into the present day. It is tale that seems old, but reveals itself as universal.

Bibliography

Brooks, Peter, Realist Vision (New Haven, Yale University, 2005)

Clausson, Nil, “Dickens’s Genera Mixta: What Kind of a Novel is Hard Times?”, Texas

Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 52, Issue 2, 2010, p. 157-180

Dickens, Charles, Hard Times (Oxford World’s Classics, 2003)

Morris, Pam, Realism (London and New York, Routledge, 2003)

Sontag, Susan, On Photohraphy (London: Penguin Group, 1978)

Williams, John Raymond, The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence (The Hogart

Press, 1984)

ID: 2228923 Meaning and Representation 4th December 2013

The tentacular extensions of Disney

To what extent should Jean Baudrillard’s discussion in ‘Disneyworld Company’ affect the way we view Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl?

Introduction

Forget your mortgage, your dentist appointments and enter a new world. We all escape

from reality, every now and then, and seek to entertain ourselves. When we are

entertained, reality bothers us. We do not want to wake up from the dream too early.

That was Walt Disney’s aim when creating a animation film company that would initially

feed from western folk tale representations (mainly European and American) and

refurbish them into more innocent, moral, bucolic tales. His success in film screens led

him to expand his ideas into theme parks with animatronic robots based on similar

representations. At the twilight of his life he had created and emporium of audiovisual

catharsis and paper-mache amusement.

Disney grew massively and had a huge influence in popular culture everywhere, even

entering sociology books. When Jean Baudrillard developed his theories of simulacra

and the hyperrreal, he used Disney as an example. He was convinced that contemporary

viewers were under the control of “entertainment conglomerates”7 and were no longer

able to distinguish between fictional representations and reality. The Walt Disney that

stated regarding Disneyland “I don’t want the public to see the world they live in while

they’re in the Park. I want them to feel that they’re in another world”, would even probably

agree with Baudrillard’s statements.

In the present essay we will try to convey weather Baudrillard theories of simulacra and

hyperreality, as exposed in the article Disneyworld Company8, remain valid when

consuming Disney products by comparing them with one of the latest Disney

blockbusters, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

7 Julia Hallam and Margaret Marshment, Realism and Popular Cinema (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000) p. 250 8 Jean Baudrillard, Disneyworld Company (Liberation, 1996) 4th December. Available at: http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/articles/disneyworld-company/

Entering Hyperreality

Disneyland is often cited as being a product of the Society of the Spectacle, a concept

developed by Guy Debord in the book of the same name. He understands spectacle as

“not a collection of images; rather it is a social relationship between people that is

mediated by images”9 and with a concrete effect on the audience:

“The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance.” (Debord, I, Thesis 12)

Even the people who run the Disney Company would find it hard to argue against

Debord: they know they sell entertainment, a packaging of culture being massively

distributed in a capitalist supply-driven society as described by Frankfurt School critical

theorists Adorno and Horkheimer10 without really paying attention on the consequences

it might have on society.

Baudrillard takes Debord´s ideas and develops them even further. The French

sociologist was particularly concerned with the diffuse link between nowadays

representations and the reality behind them. Reality and fiction seem to be merging to

the eyes of spectators “controlled by the entertainment conglomerates.” (Hallam and

Marshment, p.250)

Probably because Baudrillard was born in a family in transition from peasantry to the

urban life, he was able to detect the differences between symbols and representations

in rural societies and those of a postmodern society. He exemplifies the classical mode

of representation in his book Simulation and Simulacra11 by means of a map: there is a

clear signifier (a map) and a clear signified (the land represented on it). Baudrillard

believes that with the rise of realism, representations took the form of simulations or “the

art of pretending that something is real when it´s not”12. As he tended to express his

concepts in the form of metaphors instead of crystal clear definitions, he exemplifies

simulation quoting Littré:

9 Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (Black & Red, 2006) Chapter I, Thesis 4 10 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialect of Enlightment (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1998) , The Culture Industry: Enlightment as Mass Deception, p. 120 11 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (University of Michigan Press, 1994) p.1 12 Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictonary (Oxford University Press, 1974)

“Whoever fakes an illness can simply stay in bed and make everyone believe he is ill. Whoever simulates and illness produces in himself some of the symptoms.” (Simulacra and Simulation, p.3)

In postmodern societies, Baudrillard says, the chain between signifier and signified has

broken. As he puts it himself in the book, “the map precedes the territory” (Simulacra and

Simulation, p.1). What that entangles for the world of art and culture is that

representations nowadays; be it images, paintings, films or videogames and because of

their massive distribution in society, have a diffuse link with reality. He defines those

representations as simulacra. In a quote included in his book attributed to Ecclesiastes,

says “The simulacrum is never what hides the truth - it is truth that hides the fact that

there is none. The simulacrum is true.” (Simulacra and Simulation, p.1)

To illustrate his point, Baudrillard offers us the example of Disneyland as a system of

representations with no link to reality based upon simulacra and influential in popular

culture (Simulacra and Simulation, p.12)

But there is yet another concept important in Baudrillard´s thought before we jump to a

straightforward comparison with the Disney universe. Once we have established that

simulacra are modes of representation being massively distributed in our media and

culture; Baudrillard is concerned with the fact that we can no longer find out that they

have no basis in reality, since they are apparently real. We can relate that with the degree

of realism achieved by technology in the world of photography, special effects, or

animatronics; as Coulter does when comparing Baudrillard’s relationship with cinema13.

Zygmunt Bauman points out a similar problem in media, where many of the events are

simplified or staged.14 The copycat feels more than or at least as real as we can expect

it from reality. To describe this effect, Baudrillard coined the term hyperreality.

“Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.” (Simulacra

and Simulation, p.12-13)

13 Gerry Coulter, Jean Baudrillard and Cinema: The Problems of Technology, Realism and History, Film-Philosophy Journal, Vol 14, Issue 2, 2010, p. 6-20, p.9 14 Alan Bryman, Disney and his Worlds (London and New York: Routledge, 1995) p. 135

The leap between the Society of the Spectacle and hyperreality, or virtual world, is

summed up in this paragraph:

“But we are no longer in a society of spectacle, which itself has become a spectacular concept. It is no longer the contagion of spectacle that alters reality, but rather the contagion of virtuality that erases the spectacle” (Disneyworld Company, Liberation)

Baudrillard’s critique offers a metaphorical explanation of what he believes it´s a

fundamental problem in today´s virtual modes of representation. We can exemplify that

sticking to his article published in Liberation.

“What we find in the parks [Disneyland and Disneyworld] is a reconstruction of the past which exaggerates positive elements and plays down or altogether omits negative ones.” (Disneyworld Company, Liberation)

The omission means that the Disney´s theme parks present an idealized image of the

past - without problems caused by industry, without issues of race or gender and free of

any form of conflict – and a utopian image of the future (Bryman, p. 101-107). All of it

appears accurate in the eye of the beholder because of its high degree of realism and

detail. The main problem, though, is the following:

“Disney World and its tentacular extension is a generalized metastasis, a cloning of the world and of our mental universe, not in the imaginary but in a viral and virtual mode.” (Disneyworld Company, Liberation)

With the frenzy reproduction and propagation of modes of representation in our mass

consumption society, these systems of simulacrum are accepted as reality and get

copied and reproduced in other representations, thus creating total confusion with

respect to the links between representations and reality. Welcome to the world of

hyperreality.

The tentacular extensions of a typical Disney product

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is film released in summer 2003,

thoroughly moulded to be a summer box office hit. Produced by The Walt Disney

company and directed by Gore Verbinsky, the film took inspiration from the ride Pirates

of the Caribbean in Disneyland. It featured some of the most popular actors at the time:

Johnny Depp (Jack Sparrow), Orlando Bloom (Will Turner), Keira Knightley (Elizabeth

Swann) and Geoffrey Rush (Captain Barbossa). We will exemplify the risky nature of the

production and the considerable cultural impact with some figures: a big budget

($125,000,000)15, the second most grossing film in the year of its release - $634,954,103

worldwide (The Numbers) - and mainly positive reviews by critics (79%)16 and audience

- 86% (Rotten Tomatoes). We are speaking, therefore, about a highly regarded film with

a big impact in popular culture.

Pirates of the Caribbean depicts the world of 17th Century Caribbean Piracy following

the quest of Jack Sparrow, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann to defeat a ghostlike pirate,

Captain Barbossa and his crew, who suffer from an ancient curse. It features the

classical Disney themes: duality between heroes and villains (Will Turner against Capitan

Barbossa), wish fulfillment (successful love story), character evolution from low

beginnings to happy endings (Will Turner wins respect and Jack Sparrow his ship),

coming of age story arches (Will Turner accepting his pirate nature) and an idealized

portray of the Caribbean.

If there is an element in the Pirates of the Caribbean saga that would not fit in with the

Disney themes, that is the character played by Johnny Depp, Jack Sparrow. His shade

of gray morale is highly ambiguous, as well as his sanity and even his sexuality. The

actor Johnny Depp played a crucial role in depicting the pirate as he appears in the final

version, getting inspiration from rock star Keith Richards17; all of this raised Disney’s

doubts about its adequacy for the film. Maybe that’s why Disney decided to hide their

classical initial logo from the final product. Moreover, it makes us think about the complex

relationship between a representation (pirate) and the reality behind it (a rock star).

Pirates in hyperreality

Having established that Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is a

product that generally follows the Disney guidelines, we can proceed to see how

Baudrillard’s ideas might affect the way we see the film. To begin with, The Curse of the

Black Pearl depicts a world based on a historic reality: that one of the Caribbean Piracy

in the 17th Century. Although if we look it through the scope of Baudrillard’s theories, we

can assess that despite having a certain amount of realism an historical facts, the 17th

Century is depicted realistically but “seeks to erase time by synchronizing all the periods,

15 The Numbers (Nash Information Services, LLC, 1997-2013) 4th December. Available at: http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-The-Curse-of-the-Black-Pearl 16 Rotten Tomatoes, (Flixter Inc, 2013) 4th December. Available at: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pirates_of_the_caribbean_the_curse_of_the_black_pearl/ 17 Hugh Muir, Swashbuckler Stone inspired Johnny Depp (The Guardian, 2006) 4th December. Abailable at: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/oct/30/topstories3.film

all the cultures, in a single traveling motion, by juxtaposing them in a single scenario.”

(Disneyworld Company, Liberation)

An example of this misuse of representation which “erases time” might have its origin in

the confusion of historical codes and modern-day ones. In the film, the character

Elizabeth Swann might seem a woman in the 17th Century - she doesn’t participate in

the world of men, she dresses a corset, she has a maid who is also her confidant and

considers her father’s suggestions when marrying - her role, though, is reversed

throughout the plot to represent a 21st Century depiction of women’s place in society -

she manages to have a voice and involvement with the world of men, she chooses her

love interest with complete freedom, and develops and independent, strong personality.

The final Elizabeth can be considered an anachronism. The mixing of modern day

conventions with history as well as representations from all places and cultures is also

noticed by post-modern thinker David Harvey as quoted in Disney and his Worlds:

“…it is now possible to experience the world’s geography vicariously, as a simulacrum. The interweaving of simulacra in daily life brings together different world (of commodities) in the same space and time.” (Bryman, p.128)

The way the Caribbean is portrayed in the film also reveals a certain infiltration of

modern-day culture. When Elizabeth Swann and Jack Sparrow are stranded on a

deserted island, he behaves just like many tourists in the Caribbean nowadays: drinking

rum, dancing festive while saying the line “Welcome to the Caribbean, love”. Paying

attention to some secondary characters, a gender joke is played when the comical duo

of pirates dress up as women to distract the English Soldiers so that the Pirates can

attack the Interceptor, also a modern day joke unlikely to take place at the time, as

gender role was strictly differentiated.

This and other simulacra would indicate that The Curse of the Black Pearl functions in

the world of the hyperreal as defined by Baudrillard. It presents a problem for the

sociologist because he thinks that representations unlinked to reality, simulacra, get

copied and spread elsewhere, thus representing an increasingly narrow view of the

world. To illustrate this idea let’s take a look first at intertextuality in the film.

First of all, we understand intertextuality as the relationship between texts (Oxford

Advanced Learner’s Dictionary); and we can extend this definition to other mediums,

such as films. So, is there intertextuality in The Curse of the Black Pearl?

To begin with, we can look at the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disneyland upon which

the film is based. It takes concrete scenes directly from the ride, such as the dog which

holds the prison keys with its mouth; but also constructs its inner mythology (depiction of

the Caribbean, characterization of the pirates, treasure hunting, songs, etc.) on the

elements taken from the ride. Paradoxically, the success of the film also influenced the

ride, since now we can find animatronic representations of some characters of the film.

To Baudrillard it would be another example of how complex hyperreality is, ultimately

affecting reality itself.

Even some formal aspects are influenced by this theme park connection. Most of the

action scenes in Pirates of the Caribbean focus on a character flying around apparently

out of control with lots of interaction with the scene and its objects. Increasing the role of

the scenery in action scenes and showing the characters flying around out of control are

techniques used by the filmmakers to recreate or pay homage to the Disney ride.

Still considering intertextuality, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride bases itself on

depictions of pirates like the ones in The Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson; so

there has already been some intertextuality, some sort of simulacra, in the relationship

between the ride and reality. Moreover, there is some intertextuality between The Curse

of the Black Pearl and other pirate films like Captain Blood or The Crimson Pirate. In a

way, Johnny Depp´s role is an inversion of the roles played by Burt Lancaster and Errol

Flynn. While they are presented as perfect pirates; in the Disney film Jack Sparrow is

said to be “the worst pirate”. Nevertheless, all of them share certain traits, like a free spirit

and a questionable morality without regard to the law. It is also worth mentioning the

similarities between the Pirates of the Caribbean saga and the video game saga Monkey

Island. Both are based upon the same Disney ride and share some common traits: the

ghost-like villain (LeChuck), and inverted role of the pirate (Guybrush Threepwood), the

Caribbean scenery, etcetera. We can see how different mediums are based in similar

and simplistic representations without a clear link to reality and that Disney, with its

massive penetration on the market, or “tentacular extension”, as Baudrillard puts it, has

a huge control over systems of representation in our society, “a cloning of the world of

our mental universe”, in words of the French sociologist.

Interacting with hyperreality

And what is the effect of all this on the audience? Well, Baudrillard believes that these

modes of representation seek to involve us in their universe by presenting an interactive

experience:

“We are no longer alienated and passive spectators but interactive extras; we are the

meek lyophilized members of this huge "reality show." (Disenyworld Company,

Liberation)

Let’s take the concept of interactive extra and relate it to the Jack Sparrow character. His

function is a strange one within a blockbuster’s dynamics. He is not the hero in a classical

sense - that title belongs to Will Turner -, but to classify him as secondary character

would undermine his role in the film. One thing is for sure: he is the most ambiguous

character and an audience favorite.

There might be a reason for his appeal to the audience besides his extravagant

characterization and his sense of humor packed with self-parody; the character, in some

moments, steps “out of the scene” to comment on the plot in a similar way the spectators

might be thinking and thus engaging the audience more deeply into the plot of The Curse

of the Black Pearl. By being and interactive extra he provides a sense of complicity, some

sort of wink to the audience; the pirate makes them feel themselves like interactive

extras. Let’s see some examples. When Jack Sparrow finds out the existence of the

ghost pirates, he comments “That´s interesting!”, probably the same thought that crosses

the heads of the audience after seeing the plot twist. He explains the intricacies of being

a pirate in the first sword fighting scene against Will Turner (“Do you think it is wise boy,

crossing blades with a pirate?” and “- You cheated! - Pirate!”), as well as commenting on

how to fight a sword (“How is your footwork? If I step here…”). As we follow the

development of the love story between Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, Jack Sparrow

also comments on them as if he was outside the story: “Oh, so it is that you found a girl.

If you’re intending to brave all, hasten to her rescue and so win fair lady's heart…”, in the

prison scene; “If you were waiting for the appropriate moment, that was it”, regarding

kissing Elizabeth in the cave scene; and “It would never have worked between us,

darling” to Elizabeth in the final scene. Here, Jack Sparrow also has some out of the

scene comments to one of his antagonists, the Commodore James Norrington, “I want

you to know that I was rooting for you, mate”. Jack Sparrow is, therefore, an example of

how the world of hyperreality seeks a more profound and even interactive engagement

of the spectator. We go from Debaurd’s “passive acceptance” to Baudrillard’s “members

of this huge reality show”.

Conclusion

One of the focal points of post-modernism is to raise awareness of the relationship

between representations nowadays and reality. The problem of realism is re-examined

by many postmodern thinkers. Baudrillard’s theories raise important questions on the

understanding of representation and reality nowadays.

Nevertheless Baudrillard seems to care about issues that today's audience blatantly

accepts: There is fakeness behind today’s representation, but people consume it

nonetheless, a point raised by Stephen M. Fjellman: “Fjellman (1992) suggests that even

though people can distinguish the real from the fake, they do not greatly care about the

distinction and in fact often revel in signs of artificiality” (Bryman, p.136)

Probably we will never watch “gladiator movies as real documentaries” (Disneyworld

Company, Liberation) like Baudrillard states; he goes too far in some of his assumptions.

Buadrillard’s value when watching The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black

Pearl is to makes us think about Disney’s power to shape nowadays meanings and

representations, “the tentacular extension”, and assess the impact this might have on

culture. It might have to do with the fact that increasingly more people seek the Disney-

style or Hollywood-style representations and find it difficult to comprehend other cultural

art forms that work in a different symbolic system; such as medieval texts, experimental

films or contemporary art.

Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean, Disneyworld Company (Liberation, 1996) 4th December. Available at:

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/articles/disneyworld-company/

Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation (University of Michigan Press, 1994)

Bryman, Ian, Disney and his Worlds (London and New York: Routledge, 1995)

Coulter, Gerry, “Jean Baudrillard and Cinema: The Problems of Technology, Realism and

History”, Film-Philosophy Journal, Vol . 14, Issue 2, 2010, p. 6-20

Debord, Guy, Society of the Spectacle (Black & Red, 2006) Chapter I, Thesis 4

Hallam, Julia and Marshment, Margaret, Realism and Popular Cinema (Manchester and New

York: Manchester University Press, 2000)

Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W., Dialect of Enlightment (New York: The Continuum

Publishing Company, 1998), The Culture Industry: Enlightment as Mass Deception, p. 120

Muir, Hugh, Swashbuckler Stone inspired Johnny Depp (The Guardian, 2006) 4th December.

Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/oct/30/topstories3.film

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictonary (Oxford University Press, 1974)

Rotten Tomatoes, (Flixter Inc, 2013) 4th December. Available at:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pirates_of_the_caribbean_the_curse_of_the_black_pearl

The Numbers (Nash Information Services, LLC, 1997-2013) 4th December. Available at:

http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-The-Curse-of-the-Black-Pearl

WOW. You made it this far?? Thank you for reading ;)