http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=Ekm289&feedformat=atomDead Media Archive - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T11:27:18ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.25.2http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Postmortem_Photography&diff=13499Postmortem Photography2010-12-13T19:18:57Z<p>Ekm289: /* Bibliography */</p>
<hr />
<div>It's very hard for people in modern times to understand the concept of post-mortem photography, which was an accepted and even common thing in the 19th century. In the days before Polaroids, camcorders, and digital photos, families who wished to preserve the memory of their loved ones looked to photography. What began as simple photos of deceased loved ones slowly evolved into a design craft of its own, with staging, lighting, decoration, posing, and other production qualities that often resembled second funerals and memorials in and of themselves. The practice eventually faded in popularity (both in America and Europe) in the early part of the 20th century.<br />
<br />
[[File:Postmo1.jpg|350px|thumb|right|Parents with their deceased child]]<br />
<br />
== History ==<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Emergence ===<br />
<br />
Postmortem photography was widespread in Europe and America during the nineteenth century. The practice of photographing people after death, which began very early in the history of the medium, was performed as a special service by portrait photographers. Like portraiture, it was at first accomplished almost exclusively by the daguerreotype process.<br />
<br />
During the first few years of its existence, the daguerreotype--a small, highly detailed picture on polished silver--was an expensive luxury. As the number of photographers increased throughout the 1840s, the cost of daguerreotypes diminished. Other, less costly procedures were introduced in the 1850s, along with novel forms of portraiture like the ambrotype (on glass), the tintype (on thin, cheap metal), and the carte-de-visite (on paper). By the 1860s, photographic portraiture was affordable to virtually all members of society.<br />
<br />
=== Meaning ===<br />
<br />
The making of a portrait photograph was a memorable occasion. The results had an importance for their subjects that would diminish in the twentieth century, after photography had ceased to be a novelty. A portrait photograph was an expression of identity and of individual worth. It was particularly valued in America, a nation undergoing a process of self-definition, and in which individualism was seen as a national trait. A postmortem photograph, which represented the loss of an individual, had a value beyond that of an ordinary portrait.<br />
<br />
=== Value ===<br />
<br />
That value was reflected in its cost. As a specialty item, a postmortem photograph was more expensive than an ordinary portrait. In part, this had to do with the unusual requirements of its making, as the photographer had to come to the subject rather than the other way around. However, this by itself could not have justified the high price of a postmortem picture. Photographers would charge extraordinary fees for a product which was desired with extraordinary fervor by their customers. Whatever the reason for the high fees, the commissioning of a postmortem photograph often involved an economic sacrifice.<br />
<br />
== Types ==<br />
<br />
=== Portraiture ===<br />
<br />
Postmortem photography has one precedent in a centuries-old tradition of mourning portraiture in painting. These pictures are not at all like the earlier images of the ars moriendi. They are individual portraits rather than generic characterizations, and they depict their subjects after death rather than before. The earliest examples, made in northern Europe in the sixteenth century, show a recently-deceased subject, usually a nun or a clergyman, lying or sitting up in bed. Commoners, especially children, began to be depicted in the seventeenth century.<br />
<br />
=== American Photography ===<br />
<br />
Many American postmortem photographs depict their subjects in a similar manner. It is possible that the motif was brought from Europe, or it may be that the creators of both kinds of picture followed a similar logic--since most people died in bed, it was a sensible place to depict them. The setting, moreover, would be consistent with the last memories of the survivors.<br />
<br />
Some of the photographs differ from their painted predecessors by depicting their subjects as if they were asleep. The concept of death as sleep has am extremely long history. It appears in Homer and Virgil, in medieval Christian liturgy, and in common parlance even today, when reference is made to the "repose" of the dead. It had a sentimental appeal in the nineteenth century, as it corresponded to the urge to symbolically maintain the presence of the deceased person within the circle of the family. Someone who is seen as asleep may wake up, if only in the dreams or fantasies of the living.<br />
differences<br />
<br />
Early postmortem photographs have more variety than later ones. The body, for instance, may be depicted outside of the coffin, whereas in later pictures this almost never happens. Before the days in which the undertaker directed the proceedings, the photographer was given relative freedom to place and pose the body. After those days, the photographer was in most cases merely documenting the work of the undertaker. The pictures, like the funerary proceedings, followed a routine formula.<br />
<br />
Even the early examples have predictable variations. Subjects are depicted either closeup or full length, either in profile or full face. The camera may be above or below the subject, but it is much more frequently at the same level. The face is almost always emphasized. The result is a very direct confrontation with a dead person. In later postmortem photographs, this confrontation is mitigated by the presence of flowers, sometimes to such an extent that the body becomes difficult to locate.<br />
<br />
[[File:Body woman in coffin.gif|350px|thumb|left|]]<br />
<br />
== Legacy ==<br />
<br />
Post-mortem photography is still practiced in some areas of the world, such as Eastern Europe. Photographs, especially depicting persons who were considered to be very holy lying in their coffins are still circulated among faithful Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians.<br />
<br />
A variation of the memorial portrait involves photographing the family with a shrine (usually including a living portrait) dedicated to the deceased.<br />
<br />
More recently, post-mortem photography has been replaced by glittery memorial websites laden with animated gifs and embedded MIDI music, Facebook memorial pages, and tabloid pictures of dead celebrities whom the public has longed to feel connected to.<br />
<br />
[[File:Cobain 2.jpg|350px|thumb|right|A photograph of a deceased Kurt Cobain ran alongside a Seattle Times article detailing his suicide in 1994]]<br />
<br />
<br />
== Bibliography ==<br />
<br />
<br />
"The LAST LOOK" - ''Post-Mortem Photography in Europe'' - http://users.telenet.be/thomasweynants/post-mortem.html<br />
<br />
"Mentalfloss Blog » Only the Creepiest Photos Ever Taken." ''Mentalfloss Magazine - Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix'' - http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/14682<br />
<br />
Warner, Marina. ''Phantasmagoria - Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Fall 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Photography]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Death]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Memorial]]</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Postmortem_Photography&diff=13497Postmortem Photography2010-12-13T19:18:11Z<p>Ekm289: /* Bibliogrpahy */</p>
<hr />
<div>It's very hard for people in modern times to understand the concept of post-mortem photography, which was an accepted and even common thing in the 19th century. In the days before Polaroids, camcorders, and digital photos, families who wished to preserve the memory of their loved ones looked to photography. What began as simple photos of deceased loved ones slowly evolved into a design craft of its own, with staging, lighting, decoration, posing, and other production qualities that often resembled second funerals and memorials in and of themselves. The practice eventually faded in popularity (both in America and Europe) in the early part of the 20th century.<br />
<br />
[[File:Postmo1.jpg|350px|thumb|right|Parents with their deceased child]]<br />
<br />
== History ==<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Emergence ===<br />
<br />
Postmortem photography was widespread in Europe and America during the nineteenth century. The practice of photographing people after death, which began very early in the history of the medium, was performed as a special service by portrait photographers. Like portraiture, it was at first accomplished almost exclusively by the daguerreotype process.<br />
<br />
During the first few years of its existence, the daguerreotype--a small, highly detailed picture on polished silver--was an expensive luxury. As the number of photographers increased throughout the 1840s, the cost of daguerreotypes diminished. Other, less costly procedures were introduced in the 1850s, along with novel forms of portraiture like the ambrotype (on glass), the tintype (on thin, cheap metal), and the carte-de-visite (on paper). By the 1860s, photographic portraiture was affordable to virtually all members of society.<br />
<br />
=== Meaning ===<br />
<br />
The making of a portrait photograph was a memorable occasion. The results had an importance for their subjects that would diminish in the twentieth century, after photography had ceased to be a novelty. A portrait photograph was an expression of identity and of individual worth. It was particularly valued in America, a nation undergoing a process of self-definition, and in which individualism was seen as a national trait. A postmortem photograph, which represented the loss of an individual, had a value beyond that of an ordinary portrait.<br />
<br />
=== Value ===<br />
<br />
That value was reflected in its cost. As a specialty item, a postmortem photograph was more expensive than an ordinary portrait. In part, this had to do with the unusual requirements of its making, as the photographer had to come to the subject rather than the other way around. However, this by itself could not have justified the high price of a postmortem picture. Photographers would charge extraordinary fees for a product which was desired with extraordinary fervor by their customers. Whatever the reason for the high fees, the commissioning of a postmortem photograph often involved an economic sacrifice.<br />
<br />
== Types ==<br />
<br />
=== Portraiture ===<br />
<br />
Postmortem photography has one precedent in a centuries-old tradition of mourning portraiture in painting. These pictures are not at all like the earlier images of the ars moriendi. They are individual portraits rather than generic characterizations, and they depict their subjects after death rather than before. The earliest examples, made in northern Europe in the sixteenth century, show a recently-deceased subject, usually a nun or a clergyman, lying or sitting up in bed. Commoners, especially children, began to be depicted in the seventeenth century.<br />
<br />
=== American Photography ===<br />
<br />
Many American postmortem photographs depict their subjects in a similar manner. It is possible that the motif was brought from Europe, or it may be that the creators of both kinds of picture followed a similar logic--since most people died in bed, it was a sensible place to depict them. The setting, moreover, would be consistent with the last memories of the survivors.<br />
<br />
Some of the photographs differ from their painted predecessors by depicting their subjects as if they were asleep. The concept of death as sleep has am extremely long history. It appears in Homer and Virgil, in medieval Christian liturgy, and in common parlance even today, when reference is made to the "repose" of the dead. It had a sentimental appeal in the nineteenth century, as it corresponded to the urge to symbolically maintain the presence of the deceased person within the circle of the family. Someone who is seen as asleep may wake up, if only in the dreams or fantasies of the living.<br />
differences<br />
<br />
Early postmortem photographs have more variety than later ones. The body, for instance, may be depicted outside of the coffin, whereas in later pictures this almost never happens. Before the days in which the undertaker directed the proceedings, the photographer was given relative freedom to place and pose the body. After those days, the photographer was in most cases merely documenting the work of the undertaker. The pictures, like the funerary proceedings, followed a routine formula.<br />
<br />
Even the early examples have predictable variations. Subjects are depicted either closeup or full length, either in profile or full face. The camera may be above or below the subject, but it is much more frequently at the same level. The face is almost always emphasized. The result is a very direct confrontation with a dead person. In later postmortem photographs, this confrontation is mitigated by the presence of flowers, sometimes to such an extent that the body becomes difficult to locate.<br />
<br />
[[File:Body woman in coffin.gif|350px|thumb|left|]]<br />
<br />
== Legacy ==<br />
<br />
Post-mortem photography is still practiced in some areas of the world, such as Eastern Europe. Photographs, especially depicting persons who were considered to be very holy lying in their coffins are still circulated among faithful Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians.<br />
<br />
A variation of the memorial portrait involves photographing the family with a shrine (usually including a living portrait) dedicated to the deceased.<br />
<br />
More recently, post-mortem photography has been replaced by glittery memorial websites laden with animated gifs and embedded MIDI music, Facebook memorial pages, and tabloid pictures of dead celebrities whom the public has longed to feel connected to.<br />
<br />
[[File:Cobain 2.jpg|350px|thumb|right|A photograph of a deceased Kurt Cobain ran alongside a Seattle Times article detailing his suicide in 1994]]<br />
<br />
<br />
== Bibliography ==<br />
<br />
<br />
"The LAST LOOK" - Post-Mortem Photography in Europe - http://users.telenet.be/thomasweynants/post-mortem.html<br />
<br />
"Mentalfloss Blog » Only the Creepiest Photos Ever Taken." Mentalfloss Magazine - Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix - http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/14682<br />
<br />
Warner, Marina. ''Phantasmagoria - Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media''. Oxford: Oford University Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Fall 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Photography]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Death]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Memorial]]</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Postmortem_Photography&diff=13496Postmortem Photography2010-12-13T19:17:44Z<p>Ekm289: </p>
<hr />
<div>It's very hard for people in modern times to understand the concept of post-mortem photography, which was an accepted and even common thing in the 19th century. In the days before Polaroids, camcorders, and digital photos, families who wished to preserve the memory of their loved ones looked to photography. What began as simple photos of deceased loved ones slowly evolved into a design craft of its own, with staging, lighting, decoration, posing, and other production qualities that often resembled second funerals and memorials in and of themselves. The practice eventually faded in popularity (both in America and Europe) in the early part of the 20th century.<br />
<br />
[[File:Postmo1.jpg|350px|thumb|right|Parents with their deceased child]]<br />
<br />
== History ==<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Emergence ===<br />
<br />
Postmortem photography was widespread in Europe and America during the nineteenth century. The practice of photographing people after death, which began very early in the history of the medium, was performed as a special service by portrait photographers. Like portraiture, it was at first accomplished almost exclusively by the daguerreotype process.<br />
<br />
During the first few years of its existence, the daguerreotype--a small, highly detailed picture on polished silver--was an expensive luxury. As the number of photographers increased throughout the 1840s, the cost of daguerreotypes diminished. Other, less costly procedures were introduced in the 1850s, along with novel forms of portraiture like the ambrotype (on glass), the tintype (on thin, cheap metal), and the carte-de-visite (on paper). By the 1860s, photographic portraiture was affordable to virtually all members of society.<br />
<br />
=== Meaning ===<br />
<br />
The making of a portrait photograph was a memorable occasion. The results had an importance for their subjects that would diminish in the twentieth century, after photography had ceased to be a novelty. A portrait photograph was an expression of identity and of individual worth. It was particularly valued in America, a nation undergoing a process of self-definition, and in which individualism was seen as a national trait. A postmortem photograph, which represented the loss of an individual, had a value beyond that of an ordinary portrait.<br />
<br />
=== Value ===<br />
<br />
That value was reflected in its cost. As a specialty item, a postmortem photograph was more expensive than an ordinary portrait. In part, this had to do with the unusual requirements of its making, as the photographer had to come to the subject rather than the other way around. However, this by itself could not have justified the high price of a postmortem picture. Photographers would charge extraordinary fees for a product which was desired with extraordinary fervor by their customers. Whatever the reason for the high fees, the commissioning of a postmortem photograph often involved an economic sacrifice.<br />
<br />
== Types ==<br />
<br />
=== Portraiture ===<br />
<br />
Postmortem photography has one precedent in a centuries-old tradition of mourning portraiture in painting. These pictures are not at all like the earlier images of the ars moriendi. They are individual portraits rather than generic characterizations, and they depict their subjects after death rather than before. The earliest examples, made in northern Europe in the sixteenth century, show a recently-deceased subject, usually a nun or a clergyman, lying or sitting up in bed. Commoners, especially children, began to be depicted in the seventeenth century.<br />
<br />
=== American Photography ===<br />
<br />
Many American postmortem photographs depict their subjects in a similar manner. It is possible that the motif was brought from Europe, or it may be that the creators of both kinds of picture followed a similar logic--since most people died in bed, it was a sensible place to depict them. The setting, moreover, would be consistent with the last memories of the survivors.<br />
<br />
Some of the photographs differ from their painted predecessors by depicting their subjects as if they were asleep. The concept of death as sleep has am extremely long history. It appears in Homer and Virgil, in medieval Christian liturgy, and in common parlance even today, when reference is made to the "repose" of the dead. It had a sentimental appeal in the nineteenth century, as it corresponded to the urge to symbolically maintain the presence of the deceased person within the circle of the family. Someone who is seen as asleep may wake up, if only in the dreams or fantasies of the living.<br />
differences<br />
<br />
Early postmortem photographs have more variety than later ones. The body, for instance, may be depicted outside of the coffin, whereas in later pictures this almost never happens. Before the days in which the undertaker directed the proceedings, the photographer was given relative freedom to place and pose the body. After those days, the photographer was in most cases merely documenting the work of the undertaker. The pictures, like the funerary proceedings, followed a routine formula.<br />
<br />
Even the early examples have predictable variations. Subjects are depicted either closeup or full length, either in profile or full face. The camera may be above or below the subject, but it is much more frequently at the same level. The face is almost always emphasized. The result is a very direct confrontation with a dead person. In later postmortem photographs, this confrontation is mitigated by the presence of flowers, sometimes to such an extent that the body becomes difficult to locate.<br />
<br />
[[File:Body woman in coffin.gif|350px|thumb|left|]]<br />
<br />
== Legacy ==<br />
<br />
Post-mortem photography is still practiced in some areas of the world, such as Eastern Europe. Photographs, especially depicting persons who were considered to be very holy lying in their coffins are still circulated among faithful Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians.<br />
<br />
A variation of the memorial portrait involves photographing the family with a shrine (usually including a living portrait) dedicated to the deceased.<br />
<br />
More recently, post-mortem photography has been replaced by glittery memorial websites laden with animated gifs and embedded MIDI music, Facebook memorial pages, and tabloid pictures of dead celebrities whom the public has longed to feel connected to.<br />
<br />
[[File:Cobain 2.jpg|350px|thumb|right|A photograph of a deceased Kurt Cobain ran alongside a Seattle Times article detailing his suicide in 1994]]<br />
<br />
<br />
== Bibliogrpahy ==<br />
<br />
<br />
"The LAST LOOK" - Post-Mortem Photography in Europe - http://users.telenet.be/thomasweynants/post-mortem.html<br />
<br />
"Mentalfloss Blog » Only the Creepiest Photos Ever Taken." Mentalfloss Magazine - Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix - http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/14682<br />
<br />
Warner, Marina. ''Phantasmagoria - Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media''. Oxford: Oford University Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Fall 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Photography]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Death]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Memorial]]</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Postmortem_Photography&diff=13494Postmortem Photography2010-12-13T19:09:13Z<p>Ekm289: Created page with 'It's very hard for people in modern times to understand the concept of post-mortem photography, which was an accepted and even common thing in the 19th century. In the days befor…'</p>
<hr />
<div>It's very hard for people in modern times to understand the concept of post-mortem photography, which was an accepted and even common thing in the 19th century. In the days before Polaroids, camcorders, and digital photos, families who wished to preserve the memory of their loved ones looked to photography. What began as simple photos of deceased loved ones slowly evolved into a design craft of its own, with staging, lighting, decoration, posing, and other production qualities that often resembled second funerals and memorials in and of themselves. The practice eventually faded in popularity (both in America and Europe) in the early part of the 20th century.<br />
<br />
[[File:Postmo1.jpg|350px|thumb|right|Parents with their deceased child]]<br />
<br />
== History ==<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Emergence ===<br />
<br />
Postmortem photography was widespread in Europe and America during the nineteenth century. The practice of photographing people after death, which began very early in the history of the medium, was performed as a special service by portrait photographers. Like portraiture, it was at first accomplished almost exclusively by the daguerreotype process.<br />
<br />
During the first few years of its existence, the daguerreotype--a small, highly detailed picture on polished silver--was an expensive luxury. As the number of photographers increased throughout the 1840s, the cost of daguerreotypes diminished. Other, less costly procedures were introduced in the 1850s, along with novel forms of portraiture like the ambrotype (on glass), the tintype (on thin, cheap metal), and the carte-de-visite (on paper). By the 1860s, photographic portraiture was affordable to virtually all members of society.<br />
<br />
=== Meaning ===<br />
<br />
The making of a portrait photograph was a memorable occasion. The results had an importance for their subjects that would diminish in the twentieth century, after photography had ceased to be a novelty. A portrait photograph was an expression of identity and of individual worth. It was particularly valued in America, a nation undergoing a process of self-definition, and in which individualism was seen as a national trait. A postmortem photograph, which represented the loss of an individual, had a value beyond that of an ordinary portrait.<br />
<br />
=== Value ===<br />
<br />
That value was reflected in its cost. As a specialty item, a postmortem photograph was more expensive than an ordinary portrait. In part, this had to do with the unusual requirements of its making, as the photographer had to come to the subject rather than the other way around. However, this by itself could not have justified the high price of a postmortem picture. Photographers would charge extraordinary fees for a product which was desired with extraordinary fervor by their customers. Whatever the reason for the high fees, the commissioning of a postmortem photograph often involved an economic sacrifice.<br />
<br />
== Types ==<br />
<br />
=== Portraiture ===<br />
<br />
Postmortem photography has one precedent in a centuries-old tradition of mourning portraiture in painting. These pictures are not at all like the earlier images of the ars moriendi. They are individual portraits rather than generic characterizations, and they depict their subjects after death rather than before. The earliest examples, made in northern Europe in the sixteenth century, show a recently-deceased subject, usually a nun or a clergyman, lying or sitting up in bed. Commoners, especially children, began to be depicted in the seventeenth century.<br />
<br />
=== American Photography ===<br />
<br />
Many American postmortem photographs depict their subjects in a similar manner. It is possible that the motif was brought from Europe, or it may be that the creators of both kinds of picture followed a similar logic--since most people died in bed, it was a sensible place to depict them. The setting, moreover, would be consistent with the last memories of the survivors.<br />
<br />
Some of the photographs differ from their painted predecessors by depicting their subjects as if they were asleep. The concept of death as sleep has am extremely long history. It appears in Homer and Virgil, in medieval Christian liturgy, and in common parlance even today, when reference is made to the "repose" of the dead. It had a sentimental appeal in the nineteenth century, as it corresponded to the urge to symbolically maintain the presence of the deceased person within the circle of the family. Someone who is seen as asleep may wake up, if only in the dreams or fantasies of the living.<br />
differences<br />
<br />
Early postmortem photographs have more variety than later ones. The body, for instance, may be depicted outside of the coffin, whereas in later pictures this almost never happens. Before the days in which the undertaker directed the proceedings, the photographer was given relative freedom to place and pose the body. After those days, the photographer was in most cases merely documenting the work of the undertaker. The pictures, like the funerary proceedings, followed a routine formula.<br />
<br />
Even the early examples have predictable variations. Subjects are depicted either closeup or full length, either in profile or full face. The camera may be above or below the subject, but it is much more frequently at the same level. The face is almost always emphasized. The result is a very direct confrontation with a dead person. In later postmortem photographs, this confrontation is mitigated by the presence of flowers, sometimes to such an extent that the body becomes difficult to locate.<br />
<br />
[[File:Body woman in coffin.gif|350px|thumb|left|]]<br />
<br />
== Legacy ==<br />
<br />
Post-mortem photography is still practiced in some areas of the world, such as Eastern Europe. Photographs, especially depicting persons who were considered to be very holy lying in their coffins are still circulated among faithful Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians.<br />
<br />
A variation of the memorial portrait involves photographing the family with a shrine (usually including a living portrait) dedicated to the deceased.<br />
<br />
More recently, post-mortem photography has been replaced by glittery memorial websites laden with animated gifs and embedded MIDI music, Facebook memorial pages, and tabloid pictures of dead celebrities whom the public has longed to feel connected to.<br />
<br />
[[File:Cobain 2.jpg|350px|thumb|right|A photograph of a deceased Kurt Cobain ran alongside a Seattle Times article detailing his suicide in 1994]]</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=File:Cobain_2.jpg&diff=13493File:Cobain 2.jpg2010-12-13T19:06:18Z<p>Ekm289: The Seattle Times article detailing Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994 ran alongside a photograph of Cobain after he shot himself in the head.</p>
<hr />
<div>The Seattle Times article detailing Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994 ran alongside a photograph of Cobain after he shot himself in the head.</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=File:Body_woman_in_coffin.gif&diff=13491File:Body woman in coffin.gif2010-12-13T18:52:20Z<p>Ekm289: An example of late postmortem photography in which the body is not the principle viewpoint.</p>
<hr />
<div>An example of late postmortem photography in which the body is not the principle viewpoint.</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=File:Postmo1.jpg&diff=13487File:Postmo1.jpg2010-12-13T18:29:58Z<p>Ekm289: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Article_Name&diff=13486Article Name2010-12-13T18:26:18Z<p>Ekm289: Blanked the page</p>
<hr />
<div></div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Geocities&diff=12400Geocities2010-11-17T07:21:27Z<p>Ekm289: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''GeoCities 1994-2009'''<br />
<br />
[[File:Sorry no longer avail.png]]<br />
<br />
== What's A GeoCities? ==<br />
GeoCities was a webhosting service that allowed its users to create webpages with little to no knowledge of coding needed. With 15 MB of allocated space, pages were based on personal interest, such as fanpages or personal homepages.<br />
<br />
=== History ===<br />
GeoCities was created by David Bohnett and John Rezner in 1994. The webhosting service initiated as a beta program called ''Beverly Hills Internet''. The concept was to creat cyber "cities" in which users would select a virtual “city” where they wanted their web site to categorized under. When the site went public on June 7, 1995, it consisted of only 5 "cities": Beverly Hills,Silicon Valley, Capitol Hill, Tokyo, and Paris. Around this time, they rebranded the company as GeoPages, and then later changed its name to GeoCities.<br />
After being publicly available for only a short time, GeoCities' popularity spiked immensely and by December 1995, the service hosted 25000 pages and had over 6 million page views per month.<br />
<br />
In 1996 GeoCities introduced ads on every page in order to make a higher profit. While this move was greatly protested by users, the action was not reverted, but GeoCities popularity did not suffer. By June 1997, GeoCities was the fifth most popular web site on the Web.<br />
<br />
In 1999 GeoCities was bought by Yahoo, for $3,570 million. At this time, the current user base count stood at 1.8 million users with over 200,000 being between the ages of 3 and 15. The Yahoo transfer process was not entirely smooth, and many users left due to a change in the terms of service which stated that Yahoo owned all of the hosted content, including pictures and any other media uploaded. Yahoo! eventually did reverse the decision and the original ToS were reinstated. By the end of 1999, GeoCities was the third most visited site behind AOL and Yahoo.<br />
<br />
Though 2001 began with new branches for GeoCities, such as the Geostore, Yahoo released a new premium hosting service, which gave more hosting space and unlimited bandwidth. This new service caught on and GeoCities' free service became less and less appealing to users over the years. <br />
<br />
GeoCities stopped being the top-of-the-line webhosting company and became a simplistic, outdated website that offered what is now thought of as a very insignificant amount of space. And although that did not stop the service from being used and visited, it surely decreased since its golden age. IE/ from 2006 to 2008 GeoCities goes from 18,900,000 unique visitors to 11,500,000. <br />
<br />
In April 23 of 2009, Yahoo announced the closure of GeoCities. Registrations closed, and all data began to get erased. In June,Yahoo announced the official deathdate of GeoCities as October 26, 2009. One year late, on Oct. 26, 2010, a team of archivists re-released the service, in its entirety, as a single, giant torrent file.<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Social History ===<br />
<br />
<br />
''Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, was only 10 years old when Geocities created in 1994.''<br />
<br />
Geocities essentially demonstrates how necessary continual innovation are for a web media business. In 1998, there were approximately 2 million sites arranged in the various "neighborhoods." The hosting service was originally organized like this to allow advertisers to target their audiences more effectively -- there were "neighborhoods" for every interest area.<br />
Part of Geocities's problem was that so many of the individual sites were so lightly visited or just totally inactive (users got bored and left half-made sites, or just made it once and forgot about it, or just no one was reading their ramblings) that Geocities basically plateaued.<br />
<br />
Geocities became popular before broadband internet was around, and once that arrived, other sharing, community-oriented sites popped up too. Photos could be uploaded to other sites in minutes, whereas it sometimes took 6 hours to upload one JPEG file to a Geocities site. The Geocities model of "cyber communities" was taken to the next level with sites totally dedicated to social networking - like Friendster and Myspace. The Geocities neighborhoods like Enchanted Forest (for kids) or Area 51 (for science and technology sites) were supposed to promote cyber-comraderie, but the "friending" feature on these new social networking sites promoted connections even further than Geocities did.<br />
<br />
At its height in 1997, Geocities got 10 new registrations a second.<br />
<br />
At the time of its death, there were an estimated 40 million Geocities accounts.<br />
<br />
Geocities's appeal stemmed from people's natural yearning for connection and their innate want to express themselves. The freedom that Geocities allowed was its main draw, whereas Facebook first attracted users with simplicity, clean design, and an overall ease of use.<br />
Geocities founder David Bonnet said, "We had templates, so people could [create the sites] in a matter of minutes."<br />
Geocities sites could be very simple or extremely intricate, and extensive knowledge of HTML was not necessary -- there was a built-in file manager and hosting service, but also a place to edit your own code if you so desired.<br />
Geocities was popular because you didn't have to worry about hosting files or setting up domain names or any of the more complex web development issues, and it was all free, supported by with banner ads on the individual pages.<br />
<br />
The social network craze combined with blogging were the two big internet threats that brought down Geocities. The demise of Geocities started with personal diary sites and rudimentary online communities like LiveJournal, Xanga, and Friendster, but then bigger players emerged with Myspace and Blogger. Ultimately Wordpress and Facebook took over everything Geocities did best. People who really wanted to just publish their own thoughts on the web started setting up blogs that were easier to create and required minimal effort. People also didn't have to worry about the ads that came hand-in-hand with the free pages from Geocities.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== sources ==<br />
<br />
http://www.bohnettfoundation.org/news_stories/view/100741<br />
http://www.webhostingshow.com/2009/05/06/a-lesson-in-geocities-history/<br />
http://www.kingrosales.com/how-blogs-social-networks-killed-yahoo-geocities/<br />
http://mashable.com/2009/10/25/geocities-closes-2/<br />
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/29/geocities-torrent<br />
http://www.pcworld.com/article/163765/so_long_geocities_we_forgot_you_still_existed.html<br />
http://www.switched.com/2009/04/24/rip-geocities-1994-2009/<br />
Lunau, Kate. "Lessons from GeoCities' death." Maclean's 122.34 (2009): 29. OmniFile Full Text Mega. Web.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
[[Category:Fall 2010]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Technology]] <br />
[[Category:Internet]] <br />
[[Category:User based]]</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Geocities&diff=12399Geocities2010-11-17T07:20:58Z<p>Ekm289: </p>
<hr />
<div>GeoCities 1994-2009<br />
<br />
[[File:Sorry no longer avail.png]]<br />
<br />
== What's A GeoCities? ==<br />
GeoCities was a webhosting service that allowed its users to create webpages with little to no knowledge of coding needed. With 15 MB of allocated space, pages were based on personal interest, such as fanpages or personal homepages.<br />
<br />
=== History ===<br />
GeoCities was created by David Bohnett and John Rezner in 1994. The webhosting service initiated as a beta program called ''Beverly Hills Internet''. The concept was to creat cyber "cities" in which users would select a virtual “city” where they wanted their web site to categorized under. When the site went public on June 7, 1995, it consisted of only 5 "cities": Beverly Hills,Silicon Valley, Capitol Hill, Tokyo, and Paris. Around this time, they rebranded the company as GeoPages, and then later changed its name to GeoCities.<br />
After being publicly available for only a short time, GeoCities' popularity spiked immensely and by December 1995, the service hosted 25000 pages and had over 6 million page views per month.<br />
<br />
In 1996 GeoCities introduced ads on every page in order to make a higher profit. While this move was greatly protested by users, the action was not reverted, but GeoCities popularity did not suffer. By June 1997, GeoCities was the fifth most popular web site on the Web.<br />
<br />
In 1999 GeoCities was bought by Yahoo, for $3,570 million. At this time, the current user base count stood at 1.8 million users with over 200,000 being between the ages of 3 and 15. The Yahoo transfer process was not entirely smooth, and many users left due to a change in the terms of service which stated that Yahoo owned all of the hosted content, including pictures and any other media uploaded. Yahoo! eventually did reverse the decision and the original ToS were reinstated. By the end of 1999, GeoCities was the third most visited site behind AOL and Yahoo.<br />
<br />
Though 2001 began with new branches for GeoCities, such as the Geostore, Yahoo released a new premium hosting service, which gave more hosting space and unlimited bandwidth. This new service caught on and GeoCities' free service became less and less appealing to users over the years. <br />
<br />
GeoCities stopped being the top-of-the-line webhosting company and became a simplistic, outdated website that offered what is now thought of as a very insignificant amount of space. And although that did not stop the service from being used and visited, it surely decreased since its golden age. IE/ from 2006 to 2008 GeoCities goes from 18,900,000 unique visitors to 11,500,000. <br />
<br />
In April 23 of 2009, Yahoo announced the closure of GeoCities. Registrations closed, and all data began to get erased. In June,Yahoo announced the official deathdate of GeoCities as October 26, 2009. One year late, on Oct. 26, 2010, a team of archivists re-released the service, in its entirety, as a single, giant torrent file.<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Social History ===<br />
<br />
<br />
''Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, was only 10 years old when Geocities created in 1994.''<br />
<br />
Geocities essentially demonstrates how necessary continual innovation are for a web media business. In 1998, there were approximately 2 million sites arranged in the various "neighborhoods." The hosting service was originally organized like this to allow advertisers to target their audiences more effectively -- there were "neighborhoods" for every interest area.<br />
Part of Geocities's problem was that so many of the individual sites were so lightly visited or just totally inactive (users got bored and left half-made sites, or just made it once and forgot about it, or just no one was reading their ramblings) that Geocities basically plateaued.<br />
<br />
Geocities became popular before broadband internet was around, and once that arrived, other sharing, community-oriented sites popped up too. Photos could be uploaded to other sites in minutes, whereas it sometimes took 6 hours to upload one JPEG file to a Geocities site. The Geocities model of "cyber communities" was taken to the next level with sites totally dedicated to social networking - like Friendster and Myspace. The Geocities neighborhoods like Enchanted Forest (for kids) or Area 51 (for science and technology sites) were supposed to promote cyber-comraderie, but the "friending" feature on these new social networking sites promoted connections even further than Geocities did.<br />
<br />
At its height in 1997, Geocities got 10 new registrations a second.<br />
<br />
At the time of its death, there were an estimated 40 million Geocities accounts.<br />
<br />
Geocities's appeal stemmed from people's natural yearning for connection and their innate want to express themselves. The freedom that Geocities allowed was its main draw, whereas Facebook first attracted users with simplicity, clean design, and an overall ease of use.<br />
Geocities founder David Bonnet said, "We had templates, so people could [create the sites] in a matter of minutes."<br />
Geocities sites could be very simple or extremely intricate, and extensive knowledge of HTML was not necessary -- there was a built-in file manager and hosting service, but also a place to edit your own code if you so desired.<br />
Geocities was popular because you didn't have to worry about hosting files or setting up domain names or any of the more complex web development issues, and it was all free, supported by with banner ads on the individual pages.<br />
<br />
The social network craze combined with blogging were the two big internet threats that brought down Geocities. The demise of Geocities started with personal diary sites and rudimentary online communities like LiveJournal, Xanga, and Friendster, but then bigger players emerged with Myspace and Blogger. Ultimately Wordpress and Facebook took over everything Geocities did best. People who really wanted to just publish their own thoughts on the web started setting up blogs that were easier to create and required minimal effort. People also didn't have to worry about the ads that came hand-in-hand with the free pages from Geocities.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== sources ==<br />
<br />
http://www.bohnettfoundation.org/news_stories/view/100741<br />
http://www.webhostingshow.com/2009/05/06/a-lesson-in-geocities-history/<br />
http://www.kingrosales.com/how-blogs-social-networks-killed-yahoo-geocities/<br />
http://mashable.com/2009/10/25/geocities-closes-2/<br />
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/29/geocities-torrent<br />
http://www.pcworld.com/article/163765/so_long_geocities_we_forgot_you_still_existed.html<br />
http://www.switched.com/2009/04/24/rip-geocities-1994-2009/<br />
Lunau, Kate. "Lessons from GeoCities' death." Maclean's 122.34 (2009): 29. OmniFile Full Text Mega. Web.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
[[Category:Fall 2010]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Technology]] <br />
[[Category:Internet]] <br />
[[Category:User based]]</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Geocities&diff=12398Geocities2010-11-17T07:19:15Z<p>Ekm289: Created page with 'GeoCities 1994-2009 File:Sorry no longer avail.png == What's A GeoCities? == GeoCities was a webhosting service that allowed its users to create webpages with little to no …'</p>
<hr />
<div>GeoCities 1994-2009<br />
<br />
[[File:Sorry no longer avail.png]]<br />
<br />
== What's A GeoCities? ==<br />
GeoCities was a webhosting service that allowed its users to create webpages with little to no knowledge of coding needed. With 15 MB of allocated space, pages were based on personal interest, such as fanpages or personal homepages.<br />
<br />
=== History ===<br />
GeoCities was created by David Bohnett and John Rezner in 1994. The webhosting service initiated as a beta program called ''Beverly Hills Internet''. The concept was to creat cyber "cities" in which users would select a virtual “city” where they wanted their web site to categorized under. When the site went public on June 7, 1995, it consisted of only 5 "cities": Beverly Hills,Silicon Valley, Capitol Hill, Tokyo, and Paris. Around this time, they rebranded the company as GeoPages, and then later changed its name to GeoCities.<br />
After being publicly available for only a short time, GeoCities' popularity spiked immensely and by December 1995, the service hosted 25000 pages and had over 6 million page views per month.<br />
<br />
In 1996 GeoCities introduced ads on every page in order to make a higher profit. While this move was greatly protested by users, the action was not reverted, but GeoCities popularity did not suffer. By June 1997, GeoCities was the fifth most popular web site on the Web.<br />
<br />
In 1999 GeoCities was bought by Yahoo, for $3,570 million. At this time, the current user base count stood at 1.8 million users with over 200,000 being between the ages of 3 and 15. The Yahoo transfer process was not entirely smooth, and many users left due to a change in the terms of service which stated that Yahoo owned all of the hosted content, including pictures and any other media uploaded. Yahoo! eventually did reverse the decision and the original ToS were reinstated. By the end of 1999, GeoCities was the third most visited site behind AOL and Yahoo.<br />
<br />
Though 2001 began with new branches for GeoCities, such as the Geostore, Yahoo released a new premium hosting service, which gave more hosting space and unlimited bandwidth. This new service caught on and GeoCities' free service became less and less appealing to users over the years. <br />
<br />
GeoCities stopped being the top-of-the-line webhosting company and became a simplistic, outdated website that offered what is now thought of as a very insignificant amount of space. And although that did not stop the service from being used and visited, it surely decreased since its golden age. IE/ from 2006 to 2008 GeoCities goes from 18,900,000 unique visitors to 11,500,000. <br />
<br />
In April 23 of 2009, Yahoo announced the closure of GeoCities. Registrations closed, and all data began to get erased. In June,Yahoo announced the official deathdate of GeoCities as October 26, 2009. One year late, on Oct. 26, 2010, a team of archivists re-released the service, in its entirety, as a single, giant torrent file.<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Social History ===<br />
<br />
<br />
''Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, was only 10 years old when Geocities created in 1994.''<br />
<br />
Geocities essentially demonstrates how necessary continual innovation are for a web media business. In 1998, there were approximately 2 million sites arranged in the various "neighborhoods." The hosting service was originally organized like this to allow advertisers to target their audiences more effectively -- there were "neighborhoods" for every interest area.<br />
Part of Geocities's problem was that so many of the individual sites were so lightly visited or just totally inactive (users got bored and left half-made sites, or just made it once and forgot about it, or just no one was reading their ramblings) that Geocities basically plateaued.<br />
<br />
Geocities became popular before broadband internet was around, and once that arrived, other sharing, community-oriented sites popped up too. Photos could be uploaded to other sites in minutes, whereas it sometimes took 6 hours to upload one JPEG file to a Geocities site. The Geocities model of "cyber communities" was taken to the next level with sites totally dedicated to social networking - like Friendster and Myspace. The Geocities neighborhoods like Enchanted Forest (for kids) or Area 51 (for science and technology sites) were supposed to promote cyber-comraderie, but the "friending" feature on these new social networking sites promoted connections even further than Geocities did.<br />
<br />
At its height in 1997, Geocities got 10 new registrations a second.<br />
<br />
At the time of its death, there were an estimated 40 million Geocities accounts.<br />
<br />
Geocities's appeal stemmed from people's natural yearning for connection and their innate want to express themselves. The freedom that Geocities allowed was its main draw, whereas Facebook first attracted users with simplicity, clean design, and an overall ease of use.<br />
Geocities founder David Bonnet said, "We had templates, so people could [create the sites] in a matter of minutes."<br />
Geocities sites could be very simple or extremely intricate, and extensive knowledge of HTML was not necessary -- there was a built-in file manager and hosting service, but also a place to edit your own code if you so desired.<br />
Geocities was popular because you didn't have to worry about hosting files or setting up domain names or any of the more complex web development issues, and it was all free, supported by with banner ads on the individual pages.<br />
<br />
The social network craze combined with blogging were the two big internet threats that brought down Geocities. The demise of Geocities started with personal diary sites and rudimentary online communities like LiveJournal, Xanga, and Friendster, but then bigger players emerged with Myspace and Blogger. Ultimately Wordpress and Facebook took over everything Geocities did best. People who really wanted to just publish their own thoughts on the web started setting up blogs that were easier to create and required minimal effort. People also didn't have to worry about the ads that came hand-in-hand with the free pages from Geocities.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== sources ==<br />
<br />
http://www.bohnettfoundation.org/news_stories/view/100741<br />
http://www.webhostingshow.com/2009/05/06/a-lesson-in-geocities-history/<br />
http://www.kingrosales.com/how-blogs-social-networks-killed-yahoo-geocities/<br />
http://mashable.com/2009/10/25/geocities-closes-2/<br />
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/29/geocities-torrent<br />
http://www.pcworld.com/article/163765/so_long_geocities_we_forgot_you_still_existed.html<br />
http://www.switched.com/2009/04/24/rip-geocities-1994-2009/<br />
Lunau, Kate. "Lessons from GeoCities' death." Maclean's 122.34 (2009): 29. OmniFile Full Text Mega. Web.</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=File:Sorry_no_longer_avail.png&diff=12387File:Sorry no longer avail.png2010-11-17T05:51:41Z<p>Ekm289: R.I.P Geocities</p>
<hr />
<div>R.I.P Geocities</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Literary_Hoax&diff=11317Literary Hoax2010-10-27T19:58:15Z<p>Ekm289: </p>
<hr />
<div>'' “You can't handle the truth!”''<br />
-Jack Nicholson as Colonel Gessup in ''A Few Good Men''<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
A literary hoax is a situation where an author of any published medium that is published masks their own identity by assuming another. The term literary hoax implies certain assumptions about what is labeled authentic literary works which is said to represent the personal effort of an author or group alone claiming responsibility for what is produced. Conversely a literary hoaxer seeks to obscure his or her own contributions to the work that is produced, offering it as the effort of an entirely different person often concocting elaborate back stories and smokescreens to keep the illusion of the imaginary author alive. In a recent and thought-provoking analysis of literary hoaxes Ken Ruthven contends that 'since what a society values will show up obliquely in what it rejects, reactions to literary forgeries illuminate perceptions of literariness' (Ruthven, 2001). Many points create this account to be worthy of note to those working in the area of ethnic minority literary criticism and their relationship to 'literariness' (Gunew).<br />
<br />
To produce a literary hoax is to “deceive by amusing or mischievously fabrication.” Literature is fertile ground for hoaxers and people wanting to try it on. The temptation for writers to merge fact and fiction is seemingly irresistible. And there are any number of possible motivations, the question is when does a hoax in the literary world cross the line and become an outright fraud? <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Types of Hoaxes ==<br />
There are generally three types or genres of literary hoaxes.<br />
<br />
The Genuine Hoax<br />
The genuine hoax is a dishonest literary creation which is intended never to be exposed.<br />
<br />
The Entrapment Hoax<br />
The entrapment hoax is intended t o lure a particular academic, publisher, or literary community with a prank text.<br />
<br />
The Mock Hoax<br />
A genuinely experimental writer plays conscious tricks with the very notion of authorship to create a voice which is neither quite theirs nor someone else’s.<br />
<br />
== Famous Literary Hoaxes ==<br />
<br />
'''Ern Malley’s The Darkening Ecliptic'''<br />
In 1944, an Australian poetry editor published a collection of poems by a raw young talent named Ern Malley, a Melbourne mechanic who had died the previous year. The editor lauded Malley as one of the most “important poetic figures of this century.” Alas, the verses had been written as a joke by a pair of poetry purists: James McAuley and Harold Stewart penned Malley’s entire body of work in one afternoon, pulling phrases randomly from books and making it purposely obscure. Their mission was to reveal what they felt was the “gradual decay” and absurdity of avant-garde poetry. The hoax became national news and was the inspiration for Peter Carey’s 2003 novel My Life As a Fake.<br />
<br />
'''The Howard Hughes biography'''<br />
In 1970, U.S. novelist Clifford Irving cooked up a scheme with fellow writer Richard Suskind to write a fake biography of reclusive aviation and film mogul Howard Hughes. Irving landed a $750,000 advance from publisher McGraw-Hill, and with Suskind’s help, made up interviews and fabricated documents with Hughes’s forged signature. They were eventually discovered — Hughes even came out of his self-imposed exile to condemn them, claiming never to have met Irving. Both Irving and Suskind served time in jail.<br />
<br />
'''Alan Sokal''' Disgusted with a perceived slackness and ineptitude in modern academia, Dr. Alan Sokal published ''Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity''. It was a paper full of nonsensical gibberish in Duke University’s cultural studies journal Social Text. The same day the essay was published, he announced the hoax in the journal Lingua Franca.<br />
<br />
'''Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree'''<br />
Published in 1977, Forrest Carter’s celebrated memoir about a Cherokee orphan who fights racism and struggles to connect with his heritage was later revealed to have been written by a white Ku Klux Klan member named Asa Carter. (In more recent reprints, The Education of Little Tree was labeled “fiction.”) Carter had previously worked for Alabama Governor George Wallace, penning his infamous inauguration speech, in which Wallace vowed: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say: segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”<br />
<br />
'''Go Ask Alice'''<br />
This 1971 “actual diary” of a teenaged girl who died of a drug overdose was meant to be a cautionary tale for adolescents in the post-hippie era. In the late 1970s, however, its “editor,” Beatrice Sparks, a psychologist and Mormon youth counsellor, admitted to writing it based on the stories of some of her students. Sparks has gone on to produce many other “actual diaries” about troubled adolescents, including Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager and Annie's Baby: The Diary of an Anonymous Pregnant Teenager.<br />
<br />
'''The Hitler Diaries'''<br />
In 1983, the German magazine Stern announced that journalist Gerd Heidemann made the greatest Nazi memorabilia find of all time: Adolf Hitler’s diary, a whopping 62-volume set covering the crucial years of 1932 to 1945. Despite containing cornball entries like “must not forget to get tickets for the Olympic Games for Eva Braun” (or maybe because of that), the diaries were authenticated by several respected historians. Within days of the story breaking, however, a forensic study of the actual paper stock confirmed that the diaries could not have been penned in the ’30s and ’40s, and were thus fake. They had been written by a Stuttgart forger named Konrad Kujau; both he and Heidemann served time in prison.<br />
<br />
== Closest "Current" Incarnation ==<br />
<br />
'''The Fake Memoir'''<br />
<br />
'''James Frey'''<br />
<br />
<br />
'''J.T Leroy'''<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Herman Rosenblat'''<br />
<br />
== Postmodern Lit ==<br />
<br />
All the memoir hoaxes from the aforementioned lists rely on strict concepts of fiction and nonfiction, invention versus truth. But we’re in an era when these lines are blurred without consequence. Not just by people trying to manipulate their readers, but by authors doing so very transparently.<br />
<br />
Notice that Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius isn’t mentioned as a hoax-doer even though he fabricated just like some on those lists did. In Eggers’ quasi-autobiographical anti-memoir, there are blatant fantasy scenes and characters come in the narrative to comment on the book itself. In footnotes, Eggers reveals how he’s manipulating the reader.<br />
<br />
Postmodern writing (certainly not the only prevailing style now, there is a post-post) is all about transparency and about being self-conscious, ironic, even self-mocking.<br />
<br />
== Current Cultural Landscape ==<br />
<br />
Which is to say, there have actually been a lot of hoax-y things in the past couple weeks, and yet... they all suck. It's probably because, well, people are so quick now—because of rampant cynicism and a crushing worry about seeming not in-the-know, and because of information becoming available with increasing ease—to dismiss something as fake right off the bat, or soon prove it false, or just come forward to take credit for it so they can get famous. <br />
<br />
<br />
= References =<br />
<br />
Heyward, M. 1993, "Indecent, Immoral, Obscene" The Ern Malley Affair UPQ pp 182 - 212; 275 - 7<br />
<br />
Mill, J.S. 1910, "On Liberty" Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, p. 65-77.<br />
<br />
Morrison, J. & Waltkins, S. 2006, "'Scandalous Fictions: The Twentieth-Century Novel and Public Sphere", Palgrave Macmillan.<br />
<br />
Ryan & Thomas (2003).Cultures of Forgery: Making Nations, Making Selves. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, NY. pp. 178-181<br />
<br />
Wimsatt, W.K. & Beardsley, M.C. 1946, "The Intentional Fallacy", The Sewanee Review, Vol. 54, No. 3, p. 468-488.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
[[Category:Fall 2010]]<br />
[[Category:Literature]]<br />
[[Category:Hoaxes]]<br />
[[Category:Postmodernism]]</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Literary_Hoax&diff=11316Literary Hoax2010-10-27T19:57:45Z<p>Ekm289: /* Closest "Current" Incarnation */</p>
<hr />
<div>'' “You can't handle the truth!”''<br />
-Jack Nicholson as Colonel Gessup in ''A Few Good Men''<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
A literary hoax is a situation where an author of any published medium that is published masks their own identity by assuming another. The term literary hoax implies certain assumptions about what is labeled authentic literary works which is said to represent the personal effort of an author or group alone claiming responsibility for what is produced. Conversely a literary hoaxer seeks to obscure his or her own contributions to the work that is produced, offering it as the effort of an entirely different person often concocting elaborate back stories and smokescreens to keep the illusion of the imaginary author alive. In a recent and thought-provoking analysis of literary hoaxes Ken Ruthven contends that 'since what a society values will show up obliquely in what it rejects, reactions to literary forgeries illuminate perceptions of literariness' (Ruthven, 2001). Many points create this account to be worthy of note to those working in the area of ethnic minority literary criticism and their relationship to 'literariness' (Gunew).<br />
<br />
To produce a literary hoax is to “deceive by amusing or mischievously fabrication.” Literature is fertile ground for hoaxers and people wanting to try it on. The temptation for writers to merge fact and fiction is seemingly irresistible. And there are any number of possible motivations, the question is when does a hoax in the literary world cross the line and become an outright fraud? <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Types of Hoaxes ==<br />
There are generally three types or genres of literary hoaxes.<br />
<br />
The Genuine Hoax<br />
The genuine hoax is a dishonest literary creation which is intended never to be exposed.<br />
<br />
The Entrapment Hoax<br />
The entrapment hoax is intended t o lure a particular academic, publisher, or literary community with a prank text.<br />
<br />
The Mock Hoax<br />
A genuinely experimental writer plays conscious tricks with the very notion of authorship to create a voice which is neither quite theirs nor someone else’s.<br />
<br />
== Famous Literary Hoaxes ==<br />
<br />
'''Ern Malley’s The Darkening Ecliptic'''<br />
In 1944, an Australian poetry editor published a collection of poems by a raw young talent named Ern Malley, a Melbourne mechanic who had died the previous year. The editor lauded Malley as one of the most “important poetic figures of this century.” Alas, the verses had been written as a joke by a pair of poetry purists: James McAuley and Harold Stewart penned Malley’s entire body of work in one afternoon, pulling phrases randomly from books and making it purposely obscure. Their mission was to reveal what they felt was the “gradual decay” and absurdity of avant-garde poetry. The hoax became national news and was the inspiration for Peter Carey’s 2003 novel My Life As a Fake.<br />
<br />
'''The Howard Hughes biography'''<br />
In 1970, U.S. novelist Clifford Irving cooked up a scheme with fellow writer Richard Suskind to write a fake biography of reclusive aviation and film mogul Howard Hughes. Irving landed a $750,000 advance from publisher McGraw-Hill, and with Suskind’s help, made up interviews and fabricated documents with Hughes’s forged signature. They were eventually discovered — Hughes even came out of his self-imposed exile to condemn them, claiming never to have met Irving. Both Irving and Suskind served time in jail.<br />
<br />
'''Alan Sokal''' Disgusted with a perceived slackness and ineptitude in modern academia, Dr. Alan Sokal published ''Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity''. It was a paper full of nonsensical gibberish in Duke University’s cultural studies journal Social Text. The same day the essay was published, he announced the hoax in the journal Lingua Franca.<br />
<br />
'''Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree'''<br />
Published in 1977, Forrest Carter’s celebrated memoir about a Cherokee orphan who fights racism and struggles to connect with his heritage was later revealed to have been written by a white Ku Klux Klan member named Asa Carter. (In more recent reprints, The Education of Little Tree was labeled “fiction.”) Carter had previously worked for Alabama Governor George Wallace, penning his infamous inauguration speech, in which Wallace vowed: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say: segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”<br />
<br />
'''Go Ask Alice'''<br />
This 1971 “actual diary” of a teenaged girl who died of a drug overdose was meant to be a cautionary tale for adolescents in the post-hippie era. In the late 1970s, however, its “editor,” Beatrice Sparks, a psychologist and Mormon youth counsellor, admitted to writing it based on the stories of some of her students. Sparks has gone on to produce many other “actual diaries” about troubled adolescents, including Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager and Annie's Baby: The Diary of an Anonymous Pregnant Teenager.<br />
<br />
'''The Hitler Diaries'''<br />
In 1983, the German magazine Stern announced that journalist Gerd Heidemann made the greatest Nazi memorabilia find of all time: Adolf Hitler’s diary, a whopping 62-volume set covering the crucial years of 1932 to 1945. Despite containing cornball entries like “must not forget to get tickets for the Olympic Games for Eva Braun” (or maybe because of that), the diaries were authenticated by several respected historians. Within days of the story breaking, however, a forensic study of the actual paper stock confirmed that the diaries could not have been penned in the ’30s and ’40s, and were thus fake. They had been written by a Stuttgart forger named Konrad Kujau; both he and Heidemann served time in prison.<br />
<br />
== Closest "Current" Incarnation ==<br />
<br />
'''The Fake Memoir'''<br />
<br />
'''James Frey'''<br />
<br />
<br />
'''J.T Leroy'''<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Herman Rosenblat'''<br />
<br />
== Why it Pisses Us Off ==<br />
<br />
Well for one we feel betrayed. America loves to feel connected, like the know the celebrity, once a book get the “Oprah Stamp” the author’s life is like public property.<br />
It also messes with our heads. The "fake" text travels through the authentic, the "real" history (the source texts), to prove a nonexistent past. In some ways, this is the same trajectory that all texts take, feeding off a factual "before" to create an admittedly fictionalized "now" (skewed, biased -- we all admit what we do when we write, today), which then becomes the historical fodder for the future.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Postmodern Lit ==<br />
<br />
All the memoir hoaxes from the aforementioned lists rely on strict concepts of fiction and nonfiction, invention versus truth. But we’re in an era when these lines are blurred without consequence. Not just by people trying to manipulate their readers, but by authors doing so very transparently.<br />
<br />
Notice that Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius isn’t mentioned as a hoax-doer even though he fabricated just like some on those lists did. In Eggers’ quasi-autobiographical anti-memoir, there are blatant fantasy scenes and characters come in the narrative to comment on the book itself. In footnotes, Eggers reveals how he’s manipulating the reader.<br />
<br />
Postmodern writing (certainly not the only prevailing style now, there is a post-post) is all about transparency and about being self-conscious, ironic, even self-mocking.<br />
<br />
== Current Cultural Landscape ==<br />
<br />
Which is to say, there have actually been a lot of hoax-y things in the past couple weeks, and yet... they all suck. It's probably because, well, people are so quick now—because of rampant cynicism and a crushing worry about seeming not in-the-know, and because of information becoming available with increasing ease—to dismiss something as fake right off the bat, or soon prove it false, or just come forward to take credit for it so they can get famous. <br />
<br />
<br />
= References =<br />
<br />
Heyward, M. 1993, "Indecent, Immoral, Obscene" The Ern Malley Affair UPQ pp 182 - 212; 275 - 7<br />
<br />
Mill, J.S. 1910, "On Liberty" Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, p. 65-77.<br />
<br />
Morrison, J. & Waltkins, S. 2006, "'Scandalous Fictions: The Twentieth-Century Novel and Public Sphere", Palgrave Macmillan.<br />
<br />
Ryan & Thomas (2003).Cultures of Forgery: Making Nations, Making Selves. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, NY. pp. 178-181<br />
<br />
Wimsatt, W.K. & Beardsley, M.C. 1946, "The Intentional Fallacy", The Sewanee Review, Vol. 54, No. 3, p. 468-488.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
[[Category:Fall 2010]]<br />
[[Category:Literature]]<br />
[[Category:Hoaxes]]<br />
[[Category:Postmodernism]]</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Literary_Hoax&diff=11315Literary Hoax2010-10-27T19:55:37Z<p>Ekm289: /* Famous Literary Hoaxes */</p>
<hr />
<div>'' “You can't handle the truth!”''<br />
-Jack Nicholson as Colonel Gessup in ''A Few Good Men''<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
A literary hoax is a situation where an author of any published medium that is published masks their own identity by assuming another. The term literary hoax implies certain assumptions about what is labeled authentic literary works which is said to represent the personal effort of an author or group alone claiming responsibility for what is produced. Conversely a literary hoaxer seeks to obscure his or her own contributions to the work that is produced, offering it as the effort of an entirely different person often concocting elaborate back stories and smokescreens to keep the illusion of the imaginary author alive. In a recent and thought-provoking analysis of literary hoaxes Ken Ruthven contends that 'since what a society values will show up obliquely in what it rejects, reactions to literary forgeries illuminate perceptions of literariness' (Ruthven, 2001). Many points create this account to be worthy of note to those working in the area of ethnic minority literary criticism and their relationship to 'literariness' (Gunew).<br />
<br />
To produce a literary hoax is to “deceive by amusing or mischievously fabrication.” Literature is fertile ground for hoaxers and people wanting to try it on. The temptation for writers to merge fact and fiction is seemingly irresistible. And there are any number of possible motivations, the question is when does a hoax in the literary world cross the line and become an outright fraud? <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Types of Hoaxes ==<br />
There are generally three types or genres of literary hoaxes.<br />
<br />
The Genuine Hoax<br />
The genuine hoax is a dishonest literary creation which is intended never to be exposed.<br />
<br />
The Entrapment Hoax<br />
The entrapment hoax is intended t o lure a particular academic, publisher, or literary community with a prank text.<br />
<br />
The Mock Hoax<br />
A genuinely experimental writer plays conscious tricks with the very notion of authorship to create a voice which is neither quite theirs nor someone else’s.<br />
<br />
== Famous Literary Hoaxes ==<br />
<br />
'''Ern Malley’s The Darkening Ecliptic'''<br />
In 1944, an Australian poetry editor published a collection of poems by a raw young talent named Ern Malley, a Melbourne mechanic who had died the previous year. The editor lauded Malley as one of the most “important poetic figures of this century.” Alas, the verses had been written as a joke by a pair of poetry purists: James McAuley and Harold Stewart penned Malley’s entire body of work in one afternoon, pulling phrases randomly from books and making it purposely obscure. Their mission was to reveal what they felt was the “gradual decay” and absurdity of avant-garde poetry. The hoax became national news and was the inspiration for Peter Carey’s 2003 novel My Life As a Fake.<br />
<br />
'''The Howard Hughes biography'''<br />
In 1970, U.S. novelist Clifford Irving cooked up a scheme with fellow writer Richard Suskind to write a fake biography of reclusive aviation and film mogul Howard Hughes. Irving landed a $750,000 advance from publisher McGraw-Hill, and with Suskind’s help, made up interviews and fabricated documents with Hughes’s forged signature. They were eventually discovered — Hughes even came out of his self-imposed exile to condemn them, claiming never to have met Irving. Both Irving and Suskind served time in jail.<br />
<br />
'''Alan Sokal''' Disgusted with a perceived slackness and ineptitude in modern academia, Dr. Alan Sokal published ''Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity''. It was a paper full of nonsensical gibberish in Duke University’s cultural studies journal Social Text. The same day the essay was published, he announced the hoax in the journal Lingua Franca.<br />
<br />
'''Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree'''<br />
Published in 1977, Forrest Carter’s celebrated memoir about a Cherokee orphan who fights racism and struggles to connect with his heritage was later revealed to have been written by a white Ku Klux Klan member named Asa Carter. (In more recent reprints, The Education of Little Tree was labeled “fiction.”) Carter had previously worked for Alabama Governor George Wallace, penning his infamous inauguration speech, in which Wallace vowed: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say: segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”<br />
<br />
'''Go Ask Alice'''<br />
This 1971 “actual diary” of a teenaged girl who died of a drug overdose was meant to be a cautionary tale for adolescents in the post-hippie era. In the late 1970s, however, its “editor,” Beatrice Sparks, a psychologist and Mormon youth counsellor, admitted to writing it based on the stories of some of her students. Sparks has gone on to produce many other “actual diaries” about troubled adolescents, including Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager and Annie's Baby: The Diary of an Anonymous Pregnant Teenager.<br />
<br />
'''The Hitler Diaries'''<br />
In 1983, the German magazine Stern announced that journalist Gerd Heidemann made the greatest Nazi memorabilia find of all time: Adolf Hitler’s diary, a whopping 62-volume set covering the crucial years of 1932 to 1945. Despite containing cornball entries like “must not forget to get tickets for the Olympic Games for Eva Braun” (or maybe because of that), the diaries were authenticated by several respected historians. Within days of the story breaking, however, a forensic study of the actual paper stock confirmed that the diaries could not have been penned in the ’30s and ’40s, and were thus fake. They had been written by a Stuttgart forger named Konrad Kujau; both he and Heidemann served time in prison.<br />
<br />
== Closest "Current" Incarnation ==<br />
<br />
'''The Fake Memoir'''<br />
-James Frey<br />
<br />
<br />
- J.T Leroy<br />
<br />
-The holocaust guy on Oprah<br />
<br />
<br />
== Why it Pisses Us Off ==<br />
<br />
Well for one we feel betrayed. America loves to feel connected, like the know the celebrity, once a book get the “Oprah Stamp” the author’s life is like public property.<br />
It also messes with our heads. The "fake" text travels through the authentic, the "real" history (the source texts), to prove a nonexistent past. In some ways, this is the same trajectory that all texts take, feeding off a factual "before" to create an admittedly fictionalized "now" (skewed, biased -- we all admit what we do when we write, today), which then becomes the historical fodder for the future.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Postmodern Lit ==<br />
<br />
All the memoir hoaxes from the aforementioned lists rely on strict concepts of fiction and nonfiction, invention versus truth. But we’re in an era when these lines are blurred without consequence. Not just by people trying to manipulate their readers, but by authors doing so very transparently.<br />
<br />
Notice that Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius isn’t mentioned as a hoax-doer even though he fabricated just like some on those lists did. In Eggers’ quasi-autobiographical anti-memoir, there are blatant fantasy scenes and characters come in the narrative to comment on the book itself. In footnotes, Eggers reveals how he’s manipulating the reader.<br />
<br />
Postmodern writing (certainly not the only prevailing style now, there is a post-post) is all about transparency and about being self-conscious, ironic, even self-mocking.<br />
<br />
== Current Cultural Landscape ==<br />
<br />
Which is to say, there have actually been a lot of hoax-y things in the past couple weeks, and yet... they all suck. It's probably because, well, people are so quick now—because of rampant cynicism and a crushing worry about seeming not in-the-know, and because of information becoming available with increasing ease—to dismiss something as fake right off the bat, or soon prove it false, or just come forward to take credit for it so they can get famous. <br />
<br />
<br />
= References =<br />
<br />
Heyward, M. 1993, "Indecent, Immoral, Obscene" The Ern Malley Affair UPQ pp 182 - 212; 275 - 7<br />
<br />
Mill, J.S. 1910, "On Liberty" Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, p. 65-77.<br />
<br />
Morrison, J. & Waltkins, S. 2006, "'Scandalous Fictions: The Twentieth-Century Novel and Public Sphere", Palgrave Macmillan.<br />
<br />
Ryan & Thomas (2003).Cultures of Forgery: Making Nations, Making Selves. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, NY. pp. 178-181<br />
<br />
Wimsatt, W.K. & Beardsley, M.C. 1946, "The Intentional Fallacy", The Sewanee Review, Vol. 54, No. 3, p. 468-488.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
[[Category:Fall 2010]]<br />
[[Category:Literature]]<br />
[[Category:Hoaxes]]<br />
[[Category:Postmodernism]]</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Literary_Hoax&diff=11314Literary Hoax2010-10-27T19:55:20Z<p>Ekm289: /* Famous Literary Hoaxes */</p>
<hr />
<div>'' “You can't handle the truth!”''<br />
-Jack Nicholson as Colonel Gessup in ''A Few Good Men''<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
A literary hoax is a situation where an author of any published medium that is published masks their own identity by assuming another. The term literary hoax implies certain assumptions about what is labeled authentic literary works which is said to represent the personal effort of an author or group alone claiming responsibility for what is produced. Conversely a literary hoaxer seeks to obscure his or her own contributions to the work that is produced, offering it as the effort of an entirely different person often concocting elaborate back stories and smokescreens to keep the illusion of the imaginary author alive. In a recent and thought-provoking analysis of literary hoaxes Ken Ruthven contends that 'since what a society values will show up obliquely in what it rejects, reactions to literary forgeries illuminate perceptions of literariness' (Ruthven, 2001). Many points create this account to be worthy of note to those working in the area of ethnic minority literary criticism and their relationship to 'literariness' (Gunew).<br />
<br />
To produce a literary hoax is to “deceive by amusing or mischievously fabrication.” Literature is fertile ground for hoaxers and people wanting to try it on. The temptation for writers to merge fact and fiction is seemingly irresistible. And there are any number of possible motivations, the question is when does a hoax in the literary world cross the line and become an outright fraud? <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Types of Hoaxes ==<br />
There are generally three types or genres of literary hoaxes.<br />
<br />
The Genuine Hoax<br />
The genuine hoax is a dishonest literary creation which is intended never to be exposed.<br />
<br />
The Entrapment Hoax<br />
The entrapment hoax is intended t o lure a particular academic, publisher, or literary community with a prank text.<br />
<br />
The Mock Hoax<br />
A genuinely experimental writer plays conscious tricks with the very notion of authorship to create a voice which is neither quite theirs nor someone else’s.<br />
<br />
== Famous Literary Hoaxes ==<br />
<br />
'''Ern Malley’s The Darkening Ecliptic'''<br />
In 1944, an Australian poetry editor published a collection of poems by a raw young talent named Ern Malley, a Melbourne mechanic who had died the previous year. The editor lauded Malley as one of the most “important poetic figures of this century.” Alas, the verses had been written as a joke by a pair of poetry purists: James McAuley and Harold Stewart penned Malley’s entire body of work in one afternoon, pulling phrases randomly from books and making it purposely obscure. Their mission was to reveal what they felt was the “gradual decay” and absurdity of avant-garde poetry. The hoax became national news and was the inspiration for Peter Carey’s 2003 novel My Life As a Fake.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''The Howard Hughes biography'''<br />
In 1970, U.S. novelist Clifford Irving cooked up a scheme with fellow writer Richard Suskind to write a fake biography of reclusive aviation and film mogul Howard Hughes. Irving landed a $750,000 advance from publisher McGraw-Hill, and with Suskind’s help, made up interviews and fabricated documents with Hughes’s forged signature. They were eventually discovered — Hughes even came out of his self-imposed exile to condemn them, claiming never to have met Irving. Both Irving and Suskind served time in jail.<br />
<br />
'''Alan Sokal''' Disgusted with a perceived slackness and ineptitude in modern academia, Dr. Alan Sokal published ''Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity''. It was a paper full of nonsensical gibberish in Duke University’s cultural studies journal Social Text. The same day the essay was published, he announced the hoax in the journal Lingua Franca.<br />
<br />
'''Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree'''<br />
Published in 1977, Forrest Carter’s celebrated memoir about a Cherokee orphan who fights racism and struggles to connect with his heritage was later revealed to have been written by a white Ku Klux Klan member named Asa Carter. (In more recent reprints, The Education of Little Tree was labeled “fiction.”) Carter had previously worked for Alabama Governor George Wallace, penning his infamous inauguration speech, in which Wallace vowed: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say: segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”<br />
<br />
'''Go Ask Alice'''<br />
This 1971 “actual diary” of a teenaged girl who died of a drug overdose was meant to be a cautionary tale for adolescents in the post-hippie era. In the late 1970s, however, its “editor,” Beatrice Sparks, a psychologist and Mormon youth counsellor, admitted to writing it based on the stories of some of her students. Sparks has gone on to produce many other “actual diaries” about troubled adolescents, including Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager and Annie's Baby: The Diary of an Anonymous Pregnant Teenager.<br />
<br />
'''The Hitler Diaries'''<br />
In 1983, the German magazine Stern announced that journalist Gerd Heidemann made the greatest Nazi memorabilia find of all time: Adolf Hitler’s diary, a whopping 62-volume set covering the crucial years of 1932 to 1945. Despite containing cornball entries like “must not forget to get tickets for the Olympic Games for Eva Braun” (or maybe because of that), the diaries were authenticated by several respected historians. Within days of the story breaking, however, a forensic study of the actual paper stock confirmed that the diaries could not have been penned in the ’30s and ’40s, and were thus fake. They had been written by a Stuttgart forger named Konrad Kujau; both he and Heidemann served time in prison.<br />
<br />
== Closest "Current" Incarnation ==<br />
<br />
'''The Fake Memoir'''<br />
-James Frey<br />
<br />
<br />
- J.T Leroy<br />
<br />
-The holocaust guy on Oprah<br />
<br />
<br />
== Why it Pisses Us Off ==<br />
<br />
Well for one we feel betrayed. America loves to feel connected, like the know the celebrity, once a book get the “Oprah Stamp” the author’s life is like public property.<br />
It also messes with our heads. The "fake" text travels through the authentic, the "real" history (the source texts), to prove a nonexistent past. In some ways, this is the same trajectory that all texts take, feeding off a factual "before" to create an admittedly fictionalized "now" (skewed, biased -- we all admit what we do when we write, today), which then becomes the historical fodder for the future.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Postmodern Lit ==<br />
<br />
All the memoir hoaxes from the aforementioned lists rely on strict concepts of fiction and nonfiction, invention versus truth. But we’re in an era when these lines are blurred without consequence. Not just by people trying to manipulate their readers, but by authors doing so very transparently.<br />
<br />
Notice that Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius isn’t mentioned as a hoax-doer even though he fabricated just like some on those lists did. In Eggers’ quasi-autobiographical anti-memoir, there are blatant fantasy scenes and characters come in the narrative to comment on the book itself. In footnotes, Eggers reveals how he’s manipulating the reader.<br />
<br />
Postmodern writing (certainly not the only prevailing style now, there is a post-post) is all about transparency and about being self-conscious, ironic, even self-mocking.<br />
<br />
== Current Cultural Landscape ==<br />
<br />
Which is to say, there have actually been a lot of hoax-y things in the past couple weeks, and yet... they all suck. It's probably because, well, people are so quick now—because of rampant cynicism and a crushing worry about seeming not in-the-know, and because of information becoming available with increasing ease—to dismiss something as fake right off the bat, or soon prove it false, or just come forward to take credit for it so they can get famous. <br />
<br />
<br />
= References =<br />
<br />
Heyward, M. 1993, "Indecent, Immoral, Obscene" The Ern Malley Affair UPQ pp 182 - 212; 275 - 7<br />
<br />
Mill, J.S. 1910, "On Liberty" Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, p. 65-77.<br />
<br />
Morrison, J. & Waltkins, S. 2006, "'Scandalous Fictions: The Twentieth-Century Novel and Public Sphere", Palgrave Macmillan.<br />
<br />
Ryan & Thomas (2003).Cultures of Forgery: Making Nations, Making Selves. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, NY. pp. 178-181<br />
<br />
Wimsatt, W.K. & Beardsley, M.C. 1946, "The Intentional Fallacy", The Sewanee Review, Vol. 54, No. 3, p. 468-488.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
[[Category:Fall 2010]]<br />
[[Category:Literature]]<br />
[[Category:Hoaxes]]<br />
[[Category:Postmodernism]]</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Literary_Hoax&diff=11313Literary Hoax2010-10-27T19:54:50Z<p>Ekm289: /* Famous Literary Hoaxes */</p>
<hr />
<div>'' “You can't handle the truth!”''<br />
-Jack Nicholson as Colonel Gessup in ''A Few Good Men''<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
A literary hoax is a situation where an author of any published medium that is published masks their own identity by assuming another. The term literary hoax implies certain assumptions about what is labeled authentic literary works which is said to represent the personal effort of an author or group alone claiming responsibility for what is produced. Conversely a literary hoaxer seeks to obscure his or her own contributions to the work that is produced, offering it as the effort of an entirely different person often concocting elaborate back stories and smokescreens to keep the illusion of the imaginary author alive. In a recent and thought-provoking analysis of literary hoaxes Ken Ruthven contends that 'since what a society values will show up obliquely in what it rejects, reactions to literary forgeries illuminate perceptions of literariness' (Ruthven, 2001). Many points create this account to be worthy of note to those working in the area of ethnic minority literary criticism and their relationship to 'literariness' (Gunew).<br />
<br />
To produce a literary hoax is to “deceive by amusing or mischievously fabrication.” Literature is fertile ground for hoaxers and people wanting to try it on. The temptation for writers to merge fact and fiction is seemingly irresistible. And there are any number of possible motivations, the question is when does a hoax in the literary world cross the line and become an outright fraud? <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Types of Hoaxes ==<br />
There are generally three types or genres of literary hoaxes.<br />
<br />
The Genuine Hoax<br />
The genuine hoax is a dishonest literary creation which is intended never to be exposed.<br />
<br />
The Entrapment Hoax<br />
The entrapment hoax is intended t o lure a particular academic, publisher, or literary community with a prank text.<br />
<br />
The Mock Hoax<br />
A genuinely experimental writer plays conscious tricks with the very notion of authorship to create a voice which is neither quite theirs nor someone else’s.<br />
<br />
== Famous Literary Hoaxes ==<br />
<br />
'''Ern Malley’s The Darkening Ecliptic'''<br />
In 1944, an Australian poetry editor published a collection of poems by a raw young talent named Ern Malley, a Melbourne mechanic who had died the previous year. The editor lauded Malley as one of the most “important poetic figures of this century.” Alas, the verses had been written as a joke by a pair of poetry purists: James McAuley and Harold Stewart penned Malley’s entire body of work in one afternoon, pulling phrases randomly from books and making it purposely obscure. Their mission was to reveal what they felt was the “gradual decay” and absurdity of avant-garde poetry. The hoax became national news and was the inspiration for Peter Carey’s 2003 novel My Life As a Fake.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''The Howard Hughes biography'''<br />
In 1970, U.S. novelist Clifford Irving cooked up a scheme with fellow writer Richard Suskind to write a fake biography of reclusive aviation and film mogul Howard Hughes. Irving landed a $750,000 advance from publisher McGraw-Hill, and with Suskind’s help, made up interviews and fabricated documents with Hughes’s forged signature. They were eventually discovered — Hughes even came out of his self-imposed exile to condemn them, claiming never to have met Irving. Both Irving and Suskind served time in jail.<br />
<br />
'''Alan Sokal''' <br />
<br />
Disgusted with a perceived slackness and ineptitude in modern academia, Dr. Alan Sokal published Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. It was a paper full of nonsensical gibberish in Duke University’s cultural studies journal Social Text. The same day the essay was published, he announced the hoax in the journal Lingua Franca.<br />
<br />
'''Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree'''<br />
Published in 1977, Forrest Carter’s celebrated memoir about a Cherokee orphan who fights racism and struggles to connect with his heritage was later revealed to have been written by a white Ku Klux Klan member named Asa Carter. (In more recent reprints, The Education of Little Tree was labeled “fiction.”) Carter had previously worked for Alabama Governor George Wallace, penning his infamous inauguration speech, in which Wallace vowed: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say: segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”<br />
<br />
'''Go Ask Alice'''<br />
This 1971 “actual diary” of a teenaged girl who died of a drug overdose was meant to be a cautionary tale for adolescents in the post-hippie era. In the late 1970s, however, its “editor,” Beatrice Sparks, a psychologist and Mormon youth counsellor, admitted to writing it based on the stories of some of her students. Sparks has gone on to produce many other “actual diaries” about troubled adolescents, including Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager and Annie's Baby: The Diary of an Anonymous Pregnant Teenager.<br />
<br />
'''The Hitler Diaries'''<br />
In 1983, the German magazine Stern announced that journalist Gerd Heidemann made the greatest Nazi memorabilia find of all time: Adolf Hitler’s diary, a whopping 62-volume set covering the crucial years of 1932 to 1945. Despite containing cornball entries like “must not forget to get tickets for the Olympic Games for Eva Braun” (or maybe because of that), the diaries were authenticated by several respected historians. Within days of the story breaking, however, a forensic study of the actual paper stock confirmed that the diaries could not have been penned in the ’30s and ’40s, and were thus fake. They had been written by a Stuttgart forger named Konrad Kujau; both he and Heidemann served time in prison.<br />
<br />
== Closest "Current" Incarnation ==<br />
<br />
'''The Fake Memoir'''<br />
-James Frey<br />
<br />
<br />
- J.T Leroy<br />
<br />
-The holocaust guy on Oprah<br />
<br />
<br />
== Why it Pisses Us Off ==<br />
<br />
Well for one we feel betrayed. America loves to feel connected, like the know the celebrity, once a book get the “Oprah Stamp” the author’s life is like public property.<br />
It also messes with our heads. The "fake" text travels through the authentic, the "real" history (the source texts), to prove a nonexistent past. In some ways, this is the same trajectory that all texts take, feeding off a factual "before" to create an admittedly fictionalized "now" (skewed, biased -- we all admit what we do when we write, today), which then becomes the historical fodder for the future.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Postmodern Lit ==<br />
<br />
All the memoir hoaxes from the aforementioned lists rely on strict concepts of fiction and nonfiction, invention versus truth. But we’re in an era when these lines are blurred without consequence. Not just by people trying to manipulate their readers, but by authors doing so very transparently.<br />
<br />
Notice that Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius isn’t mentioned as a hoax-doer even though he fabricated just like some on those lists did. In Eggers’ quasi-autobiographical anti-memoir, there are blatant fantasy scenes and characters come in the narrative to comment on the book itself. In footnotes, Eggers reveals how he’s manipulating the reader.<br />
<br />
Postmodern writing (certainly not the only prevailing style now, there is a post-post) is all about transparency and about being self-conscious, ironic, even self-mocking.<br />
<br />
== Current Cultural Landscape ==<br />
<br />
Which is to say, there have actually been a lot of hoax-y things in the past couple weeks, and yet... they all suck. It's probably because, well, people are so quick now—because of rampant cynicism and a crushing worry about seeming not in-the-know, and because of information becoming available with increasing ease—to dismiss something as fake right off the bat, or soon prove it false, or just come forward to take credit for it so they can get famous. <br />
<br />
<br />
= References =<br />
<br />
Heyward, M. 1993, "Indecent, Immoral, Obscene" The Ern Malley Affair UPQ pp 182 - 212; 275 - 7<br />
<br />
Mill, J.S. 1910, "On Liberty" Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, p. 65-77.<br />
<br />
Morrison, J. & Waltkins, S. 2006, "'Scandalous Fictions: The Twentieth-Century Novel and Public Sphere", Palgrave Macmillan.<br />
<br />
Ryan & Thomas (2003).Cultures of Forgery: Making Nations, Making Selves. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, NY. pp. 178-181<br />
<br />
Wimsatt, W.K. & Beardsley, M.C. 1946, "The Intentional Fallacy", The Sewanee Review, Vol. 54, No. 3, p. 468-488.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
[[Category:Fall 2010]]<br />
[[Category:Literature]]<br />
[[Category:Hoaxes]]<br />
[[Category:Postmodernism]]</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Literary_Hoax&diff=11312Literary Hoax2010-10-27T19:54:17Z<p>Ekm289: /* Types of Hoaxes */</p>
<hr />
<div>'' “You can't handle the truth!”''<br />
-Jack Nicholson as Colonel Gessup in ''A Few Good Men''<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
A literary hoax is a situation where an author of any published medium that is published masks their own identity by assuming another. The term literary hoax implies certain assumptions about what is labeled authentic literary works which is said to represent the personal effort of an author or group alone claiming responsibility for what is produced. Conversely a literary hoaxer seeks to obscure his or her own contributions to the work that is produced, offering it as the effort of an entirely different person often concocting elaborate back stories and smokescreens to keep the illusion of the imaginary author alive. In a recent and thought-provoking analysis of literary hoaxes Ken Ruthven contends that 'since what a society values will show up obliquely in what it rejects, reactions to literary forgeries illuminate perceptions of literariness' (Ruthven, 2001). Many points create this account to be worthy of note to those working in the area of ethnic minority literary criticism and their relationship to 'literariness' (Gunew).<br />
<br />
To produce a literary hoax is to “deceive by amusing or mischievously fabrication.” Literature is fertile ground for hoaxers and people wanting to try it on. The temptation for writers to merge fact and fiction is seemingly irresistible. And there are any number of possible motivations, the question is when does a hoax in the literary world cross the line and become an outright fraud? <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Types of Hoaxes ==<br />
There are generally three types or genres of literary hoaxes.<br />
<br />
The Genuine Hoax<br />
The genuine hoax is a dishonest literary creation which is intended never to be exposed.<br />
<br />
The Entrapment Hoax<br />
The entrapment hoax is intended t o lure a particular academic, publisher, or literary community with a prank text.<br />
<br />
The Mock Hoax<br />
A genuinely experimental writer plays conscious tricks with the very notion of authorship to create a voice which is neither quite theirs nor someone else’s.<br />
<br />
== Famous Literary Hoaxes ==<br />
<br />
<br />
Ern Malley’s The Darkening Ecliptic<br />
In 1944, an Australian poetry editor published a collection of poems by a raw young talent named Ern Malley, a Melbourne mechanic who had died the previous year. The editor lauded Malley as one of the most “important poetic figures of this century.” Alas, the verses had been written as a joke by a pair of poetry purists: James McAuley and Harold Stewart penned Malley’s entire body of work in one afternoon, pulling phrases randomly from books and making it purposely obscure. Their mission was to reveal what they felt was the “gradual decay” and absurdity of avant-garde poetry. The hoax became national news and was the inspiration for Peter Carey’s 2003 novel My Life As a Fake.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''The Howard Hughes biography'''<br />
In 1970, U.S. novelist Clifford Irving cooked up a scheme with fellow writer Richard Suskind to write a fake biography of reclusive aviation and film mogul Howard Hughes. Irving landed a $750,000 advance from publisher McGraw-Hill, and with Suskind’s help, made up interviews and fabricated documents with Hughes’s forged signature. They were eventually discovered — Hughes even came out of his self-imposed exile to condemn them, claiming never to have met Irving. Both Irving and Suskind served time in jail.<br />
<br />
'''Alan Sokal''' <br />
<br />
Disgusted with a perceived slackness and ineptitude in modern academia, Dr. Alan Sokal published Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. It was a paper full of nonsensical gibberish in Duke University’s cultural studies journal Social Text. The same day the essay was published, he announced the hoax in the journal Lingua Franca.<br />
'''<br />
Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree'''<br />
Published in 1977, Forrest Carter’s celebrated memoir about a Cherokee orphan who fights racism and struggles to connect with his heritage was later revealed to have been written by a white Ku Klux Klan member named Asa Carter. (In more recent reprints, The Education of Little Tree was labeled “fiction.”) Carter had previously worked for Alabama Governor George Wallace, penning his infamous inauguration speech, in which Wallace vowed: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say: segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”<br />
<br />
'''Go Ask Alice'''<br />
This 1971 “actual diary” of a teenaged girl who died of a drug overdose was meant to be a cautionary tale for adolescents in the post-hippie era. In the late 1970s, however, its “editor,” Beatrice Sparks, a psychologist and Mormon youth counsellor, admitted to writing it based on the stories of some of her students. Sparks has gone on to produce many other “actual diaries” about troubled adolescents, including Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager and Annie's Baby: The Diary of an Anonymous Pregnant Teenager.<br />
<br />
'''The Hitler Diaries'''<br />
In 1983, the German magazine Stern announced that journalist Gerd Heidemann made the greatest Nazi memorabilia find of all time: Adolf Hitler’s diary, a whopping 62-volume set covering the crucial years of 1932 to 1945. Despite containing cornball entries like “must not forget to get tickets for the Olympic Games for Eva Braun” (or maybe because of that), the diaries were authenticated by several respected historians. Within days of the story breaking, however, a forensic study of the actual paper stock confirmed that the diaries could not have been penned in the ’30s and ’40s, and were thus fake. They had been written by a Stuttgart forger named Konrad Kujau; both he and Heidemann served time in prison.<br />
<br />
<br />
== Closest "Current" Incarnation ==<br />
<br />
'''The Fake Memoir'''<br />
-James Frey<br />
<br />
<br />
- J.T Leroy<br />
<br />
-The holocaust guy on Oprah<br />
<br />
<br />
== Why it Pisses Us Off ==<br />
<br />
Well for one we feel betrayed. America loves to feel connected, like the know the celebrity, once a book get the “Oprah Stamp” the author’s life is like public property.<br />
It also messes with our heads. The "fake" text travels through the authentic, the "real" history (the source texts), to prove a nonexistent past. In some ways, this is the same trajectory that all texts take, feeding off a factual "before" to create an admittedly fictionalized "now" (skewed, biased -- we all admit what we do when we write, today), which then becomes the historical fodder for the future.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Postmodern Lit ==<br />
<br />
All the memoir hoaxes from the aforementioned lists rely on strict concepts of fiction and nonfiction, invention versus truth. But we’re in an era when these lines are blurred without consequence. Not just by people trying to manipulate their readers, but by authors doing so very transparently.<br />
<br />
Notice that Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius isn’t mentioned as a hoax-doer even though he fabricated just like some on those lists did. In Eggers’ quasi-autobiographical anti-memoir, there are blatant fantasy scenes and characters come in the narrative to comment on the book itself. In footnotes, Eggers reveals how he’s manipulating the reader.<br />
<br />
Postmodern writing (certainly not the only prevailing style now, there is a post-post) is all about transparency and about being self-conscious, ironic, even self-mocking.<br />
<br />
== Current Cultural Landscape ==<br />
<br />
Which is to say, there have actually been a lot of hoax-y things in the past couple weeks, and yet... they all suck. It's probably because, well, people are so quick now—because of rampant cynicism and a crushing worry about seeming not in-the-know, and because of information becoming available with increasing ease—to dismiss something as fake right off the bat, or soon prove it false, or just come forward to take credit for it so they can get famous. <br />
<br />
<br />
= References =<br />
<br />
Heyward, M. 1993, "Indecent, Immoral, Obscene" The Ern Malley Affair UPQ pp 182 - 212; 275 - 7<br />
<br />
Mill, J.S. 1910, "On Liberty" Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, p. 65-77.<br />
<br />
Morrison, J. & Waltkins, S. 2006, "'Scandalous Fictions: The Twentieth-Century Novel and Public Sphere", Palgrave Macmillan.<br />
<br />
Ryan & Thomas (2003).Cultures of Forgery: Making Nations, Making Selves. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, NY. pp. 178-181<br />
<br />
Wimsatt, W.K. & Beardsley, M.C. 1946, "The Intentional Fallacy", The Sewanee Review, Vol. 54, No. 3, p. 468-488.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
[[Category:Fall 2010]]<br />
[[Category:Literature]]<br />
[[Category:Hoaxes]]<br />
[[Category:Postmodernism]]</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Literary_Hoax&diff=11311Literary Hoax2010-10-27T19:43:57Z<p>Ekm289: Created page with ''' “You can't handle the truth!”'' -Jack Nicholson as Colonel Gessup in ''A Few Good Men'' == Introduction == A literary hoax is a situation where an author of any pub…'</p>
<hr />
<div>'' “You can't handle the truth!”''<br />
-Jack Nicholson as Colonel Gessup in ''A Few Good Men''<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Introduction ==<br />
<br />
A literary hoax is a situation where an author of any published medium that is published masks their own identity by assuming another. The term literary hoax implies certain assumptions about what is labeled authentic literary works which is said to represent the personal effort of an author or group alone claiming responsibility for what is produced. Conversely a literary hoaxer seeks to obscure his or her own contributions to the work that is produced, offering it as the effort of an entirely different person often concocting elaborate back stories and smokescreens to keep the illusion of the imaginary author alive. In a recent and thought-provoking analysis of literary hoaxes Ken Ruthven contends that 'since what a society values will show up obliquely in what it rejects, reactions to literary forgeries illuminate perceptions of literariness' (Ruthven, 2001). Many points create this account to be worthy of note to those working in the area of ethnic minority literary criticism and their relationship to 'literariness' (Gunew).<br />
<br />
To produce a literary hoax is to “deceive by amusing or mischievously fabrication.” Literature is fertile ground for hoaxers and people wanting to try it on. The temptation for writers to merge fact and fiction is seemingly irresistible. And there are any number of possible motivations, the question is when does a hoax in the literary world cross the line and become an outright fraud? <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Types of Hoaxes ==<br />
<br />
<br />
The Genuine Hoax<br />
The genuine hoax is a dishonest literary creation which is intended never to be exposed.<br />
<br />
The Entrapment Hoax<br />
The entrapment hoax is intended t o lure a particular academic, publisher, or literary community with a prank text.<br />
<br />
The Mock Hoax<br />
A genuinely experimental writer plays conscious tricks with the very notion of authorship to create a voice which is neither quite theirs nor someone else’s.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Famous Literary Hoaxes ==<br />
<br />
<br />
Ern Malley’s The Darkening Ecliptic<br />
In 1944, an Australian poetry editor published a collection of poems by a raw young talent named Ern Malley, a Melbourne mechanic who had died the previous year. The editor lauded Malley as one of the most “important poetic figures of this century.” Alas, the verses had been written as a joke by a pair of poetry purists: James McAuley and Harold Stewart penned Malley’s entire body of work in one afternoon, pulling phrases randomly from books and making it purposely obscure. Their mission was to reveal what they felt was the “gradual decay” and absurdity of avant-garde poetry. The hoax became national news and was the inspiration for Peter Carey’s 2003 novel My Life As a Fake.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''The Howard Hughes biography'''<br />
In 1970, U.S. novelist Clifford Irving cooked up a scheme with fellow writer Richard Suskind to write a fake biography of reclusive aviation and film mogul Howard Hughes. Irving landed a $750,000 advance from publisher McGraw-Hill, and with Suskind’s help, made up interviews and fabricated documents with Hughes’s forged signature. They were eventually discovered — Hughes even came out of his self-imposed exile to condemn them, claiming never to have met Irving. Both Irving and Suskind served time in jail.<br />
<br />
'''Alan Sokal''' <br />
<br />
Disgusted with a perceived slackness and ineptitude in modern academia, Dr. Alan Sokal published Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. It was a paper full of nonsensical gibberish in Duke University’s cultural studies journal Social Text. The same day the essay was published, he announced the hoax in the journal Lingua Franca.<br />
'''<br />
Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree'''<br />
Published in 1977, Forrest Carter’s celebrated memoir about a Cherokee orphan who fights racism and struggles to connect with his heritage was later revealed to have been written by a white Ku Klux Klan member named Asa Carter. (In more recent reprints, The Education of Little Tree was labeled “fiction.”) Carter had previously worked for Alabama Governor George Wallace, penning his infamous inauguration speech, in which Wallace vowed: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say: segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”<br />
<br />
'''Go Ask Alice'''<br />
This 1971 “actual diary” of a teenaged girl who died of a drug overdose was meant to be a cautionary tale for adolescents in the post-hippie era. In the late 1970s, however, its “editor,” Beatrice Sparks, a psychologist and Mormon youth counsellor, admitted to writing it based on the stories of some of her students. Sparks has gone on to produce many other “actual diaries” about troubled adolescents, including Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager and Annie's Baby: The Diary of an Anonymous Pregnant Teenager.<br />
<br />
'''The Hitler Diaries'''<br />
In 1983, the German magazine Stern announced that journalist Gerd Heidemann made the greatest Nazi memorabilia find of all time: Adolf Hitler’s diary, a whopping 62-volume set covering the crucial years of 1932 to 1945. Despite containing cornball entries like “must not forget to get tickets for the Olympic Games for Eva Braun” (or maybe because of that), the diaries were authenticated by several respected historians. Within days of the story breaking, however, a forensic study of the actual paper stock confirmed that the diaries could not have been penned in the ’30s and ’40s, and were thus fake. They had been written by a Stuttgart forger named Konrad Kujau; both he and Heidemann served time in prison.<br />
<br />
<br />
== Closest "Current" Incarnation ==<br />
<br />
'''The Fake Memoir'''<br />
-James Frey<br />
<br />
<br />
- J.T Leroy<br />
<br />
-The holocaust guy on Oprah<br />
<br />
<br />
== Why it Pisses Us Off ==<br />
<br />
Well for one we feel betrayed. America loves to feel connected, like the know the celebrity, once a book get the “Oprah Stamp” the author’s life is like public property.<br />
It also messes with our heads. The "fake" text travels through the authentic, the "real" history (the source texts), to prove a nonexistent past. In some ways, this is the same trajectory that all texts take, feeding off a factual "before" to create an admittedly fictionalized "now" (skewed, biased -- we all admit what we do when we write, today), which then becomes the historical fodder for the future.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Postmodern Lit ==<br />
<br />
All the memoir hoaxes from the aforementioned lists rely on strict concepts of fiction and nonfiction, invention versus truth. But we’re in an era when these lines are blurred without consequence. Not just by people trying to manipulate their readers, but by authors doing so very transparently.<br />
<br />
Notice that Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius isn’t mentioned as a hoax-doer even though he fabricated just like some on those lists did. In Eggers’ quasi-autobiographical anti-memoir, there are blatant fantasy scenes and characters come in the narrative to comment on the book itself. In footnotes, Eggers reveals how he’s manipulating the reader.<br />
<br />
Postmodern writing (certainly not the only prevailing style now, there is a post-post) is all about transparency and about being self-conscious, ironic, even self-mocking.<br />
<br />
== Current Cultural Landscape ==<br />
<br />
Which is to say, there have actually been a lot of hoax-y things in the past couple weeks, and yet... they all suck. It's probably because, well, people are so quick now—because of rampant cynicism and a crushing worry about seeming not in-the-know, and because of information becoming available with increasing ease—to dismiss something as fake right off the bat, or soon prove it false, or just come forward to take credit for it so they can get famous. <br />
<br />
<br />
= References =<br />
<br />
Heyward, M. 1993, "Indecent, Immoral, Obscene" The Ern Malley Affair UPQ pp 182 - 212; 275 - 7<br />
<br />
Mill, J.S. 1910, "On Liberty" Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, p. 65-77.<br />
<br />
Morrison, J. & Waltkins, S. 2006, "'Scandalous Fictions: The Twentieth-Century Novel and Public Sphere", Palgrave Macmillan.<br />
<br />
Ryan & Thomas (2003).Cultures of Forgery: Making Nations, Making Selves. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, NY. pp. 178-181<br />
<br />
Wimsatt, W.K. & Beardsley, M.C. 1946, "The Intentional Fallacy", The Sewanee Review, Vol. 54, No. 3, p. 468-488.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
[[Category:Fall 2010]]<br />
[[Category:Literature]]<br />
[[Category:Hoaxes]]<br />
[[Category:Postmodernism]]</div>Ekm289http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Stickerbooks&diff=10505Stickerbooks2010-10-07T04:08:51Z<p>Ekm289: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
[[File:stickermania.jpg]]<br />
<br />
NOTE: THE COMPLETION OF THIS ARTICLE IS IN PROGRESS - IT WILL BE UP IN ITS PROPER FORM SHORTLY! APOLGIES FOR THE INCONVENIENCE<br />
<br />
<br />
== '''History of Stickers''' ==<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Stamps'''<br />
The first adhesive postage stamp was invented in England in 1840 by Rowland Hill. Hill, an English teacher, became interested in postal reform in the 1830s, and concerned himself with improving the efficiency and consistency of the postal system. As part of his plan for development, Hill introduced the “Penny Black”, which was the world’s first adhesive stamp. In addition to indicating that a letter was pre-paid (instead of being billed to the recipient, who could refuse delivery), Penny Blacks essentially served as the first sticker. Penny Blacks were sold in un-perforated sheets to be affixed by the sender. As with today’s decorative stickers, design was critical in early stamps. Contents were held to design postage stamps, and inventor Hill was knighted in 1860 for his contribution.<br />
<br />
[[File:Penny_black.jpg ]] <br />
<br />
'''Adhesive'''<br />
The first stamps were produced using a thin layer of gum, usually acacia gum, on the back, and would adhere to the desired surface after water-activation. Self-adhesive stamps were developed in the 1960s to avoid the problem of water-activated stamps sticking together in tropical climates. The pressure-sensitive adhesive is a rubber-based compound, and its strength is designed to vary based on the force applied in its initial application. <br />
<br />
This technology proved useful for a variety of outlets, not just for postages stamps, but also for Avery brand mailing labels, 3M Post-It Notes and other adhesive paper products. Decorative stickers for collection were not the intended use for this self-adhesive, but proved to be a relatively lucrative market in a certain sector – in 2005, sticker manufacturer Mrs. Grossman’s reported yearly revenue at almost $20 million. <br />
<br />
<br />
== ''The First Sticker & Stickermania'' ==<br />
<br />
Graphic designer Andrea Grossman created the first sticker, a big red heart, in 1979. It was from this original design that Mrs. Grossman’s Paper Company, still the largest sticker manufacturer today, began with its most popular product: Stickers by the Yard. <br />
<br />
Grossman was profiled by People Magazine and crowned as the woman who started “Stickermania” – a craze that began in the early 1980s, where children became fanatically collecting decorative stickers. Success was due in part to their size – rolls of stickers were easily placed near cash registers of stores for cheap impulsive buys by young kids with allowance money. Mrs. Grossman’s sales doubled in 1983, which sparked a transition of stickers to more of a commodity – Grossman began hiring other designers, and manufacturing specialty items, such as fuzzy stickers and puffy stickers, as well as album pages for children to store their new collections. <br />
<br />
<br />
[[File:Img-heart.jpg]]<br />
<br />
<br />
'''The Emergence of the Sticker Collecting Fad'''<br />
<br />
Though stickers became common in the late 1970s, they only grew into big business for several companies starting in the early 80’s and holding strong until the late 19with the emergence of the sticker collecting fad. Sticker collecting appealed to both boys and girl alike, with stickers ranging from simple shapes (hearts, stars), to novelty stickers (scratch and sniff, holographic) and eventually to pictures of celebrities (football stars, the spice girls). Kids across North America would proudly bring their stickers to school with them to trade during recess and lunch. Stickers became so popular that Stickers Magazine launched in 1983 for the enthusiast who just can't get enough information on stickers. <br />
<br />
----<br />
“It’s an inherently common pastime for kids to take a printed sticker and — as a from of expression, mind you — put it on something. It’s kind of like graffiti, I suppose, just maybe not as messy.”- ''John Williams, creative series manager of Topps.''<br />
----<br />
<br />
Now that all of these stickers were available, the question became where to put them. Thus, the sticker album was born. Sticker albums were books with glossy pages that were designed to hold one's most prized possessions: stickers. In order to showcase them to your friends, you would need to display them in said albums. After all, what good is a sticker collection if you can’t carry it around and make your friends jealous? The best albums had super-glossy pages so that the stickers would peel off the pages without leaving any residue and could be reused. The alternative of actually sticking the stickers onto surfaces such as notebooks and Trapper Keepers was generally frowned upon. Stickers were veritable elementary school currency, so improper usage was akin to destruction of money--it may not have been illegal, but it certainly wasn’t acceptable usage. <br />
<br />
'''The Sticker Album: Childhood Consumerism and Social Status'''<br />
A new sticker afforded its owner not only a new belonging but also recess bragging rights to the latest in sticker trends and technology. <br />
<br />
A well balanced sticker collection also held the ability to move a child through the ranks of the playground social sphere.A fuzzy puppy sitting in a high top sneaker or a three dimensional googly eyed smiley face was usually more than enough to earn you a spot at the cool table in the cafeteria. New stickers were always released to tie in with the latest film releases (especially Disney) or the new football season.<br />
<br />
'''Collection Guidelines'''<br />
<br />
Like other forms of collecting, forming sticker collections required patience, self-restraint, and the ability to enjoy something that both serves no use.<br />
In order to maintain the pristine condition of your most prized stickers, it was critical to not touch or handle your collection too roughly; in short, it was necessary to treat them like a signed first edition being brought to appraisal on Antiques Roadshow. Doing anything to compromise the alleged inherent value of the following items was the equivalent of social sticker suicide.<br />
<br />
<br />
== '''Stickers in the Digital Age''' ==<br />
<br />
Stickers and sticker collections are not abundant among today’s children for the simple fact that they are not readily available for consumers to purchase. Stores that used to sell them have either stopped selling them or have gone out of business.<br />
Sticker collectors from the 80s and 90s are attempting to keep the fad alive for the sake of nostalgia by creating online digital archives of their original collections. These collectors scan their original stickers into .JPEG format to display and share on personal blogs. In addition to digitizing their sticker collection, collectors also keep good care of their sticker books and sticker boxes to hand down in their family. With the exchange of physical stickers nearing extinction, collectors of the 80s and 90s feel it is important to share their social sticker experiences with their close friends and family, again for nostalgia’s sake.<br />
Since it is difficult to find new stickers in stores, collectors have turned to eBay to display and exchange their sticker collections. According to one collector, eBay is a “thriving market for vintage stickers.”<br />
<br />
'''The Beginning of the End'''<br />
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It was during the first decade of the year 2000 that collectable stickers began to see their demise as a viable social status. In an interview with a typical 11 year old girl, one can try to pinpoint the moment when the stickers fad started to decline and eventually vanish. When asked about her first-grade sticker collection she said, “I like the way they felt. They were cool.” When asked why she thought they were cool she responded, “They were cool because everybody collected them.” She particularly enjoyed the squishy, puffy stickers. She would go around school trading to get “cooler” stickers; a sticker in the shape of a cell phone was “way cooler” than that of a dog. Beyond trading stickers with friends, she would look forward to receiving good grades in class so that she could peel off the stars and happy face stickers to add to her collection. Interestingly, her collection did not reside inside an old fashioned sticker book; instead she stored all her stickers on school folders and binders. She did this because it made it easier to show off to her friends. Her desire to collect stickers lasted about one year. When asked why she stopped collecting them she responded, “Because they don’t sell them anymore. The Learning Express [a local toy store] doesn’t offer them anymore.” She did not respond with a glum tone, however. When asked to imagine that stickers were still available in stores today she abruptly said, “I don’t care, I’m not 6 anymore.” She recognizes that sticker collections, just like Silly Bandz and Chinese Erasers that came after it, were only fads to enjoy for a certain amount of time and then forget about. Clearly this in-between generation of sticker collectors differs greatly from the original collectors from the 80s and 90s. Once stickers became harder to find, children moved on to the next “cool” thing.<br />
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'''Interview with a Current Child'''<br />
In an interview with a typical 6 ½ year old girl, it starts to become even clearer that keeping a physical sticker collection is a nearly dead medium of social interactivity. When asked to talk about the topic at hand the young girl said, “I don’t know what that means.” After briefly explaining the concept of trading stickers she responded, “I would trade them stickers if they would give me one.” Even when trying to relate the concept of trading stickers to the latest fad Silly Bandz, the girl could not grasp such a foreign notion of collecting and sharing stickers. Due to the lack of in-store availability, sticker collection that was so rampant during the 80s and 90s has died down to a faint whisper of original collectors displaying and selling their vintage collections online.<br />
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'''Today's Digital Equivalent'''<br />
In the digital age of computers, a new generation of sticker collectors has emerged. The Bumper Sticker application for Facebook currently has 4,075,434 monthly active users with a 4 out of 5 star rating. According to the app’s information page, “Over 23 million Facebook users use Bumper Sticker to view, upload, and share virtual stickers that can be displayed on Profiles and in Streams. Browse through millions of quirky, edgy, and hilarious stickers. Add stickers to your profile and/or stick your friends! Can't find a sticker you like, it's easy to make your own.” The Bumper Sticker app has successfully recreated the sticker book craze of the 80s and 90s by bringing it into the online realm.<br />
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The simple user interface resembles a sticker book in many ways. In fact, it uses sticker book terminology to draw users into the game of collecting and sharing digital stickers. Inside “Your Sticker Binder” resides your entire collection of stickers you have picked up in the virtual store. You have the ability to “drag to reorder”, “move to profile”, and share stickers with Facebook friends. A new feature allows you to purchase backgrounds (there are chalkboard, wood, and corkboard variants) to decorate your bumper sticker tab page. Collecting, personalizing, and transporting your sticker collection has never been easier thanks to cloud-based storage and the Internet.<br />
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Physical stickers have the advantage of coming in different shapes, sizes, and styles. In a similar fashion, Bumper Sticker gives users the option to select free “standard” stickers or purchase “animated” stickers. These flashy stickers cost 200 coins; you earn 50 coins for every standard or animated sticker you upload. In this way, the app is promoting its users to add personal and customized stickers to the constantly growing online collection. Uploading your own sticker is simple; once you find or create a .jpeg, .png, or .gif image on your computer, the app does the rest for you. Uploaded stickers become viewable by the entire community of Facebook users.<br />
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It must be understood that the concept of sticker collection is far from becoming a dead medium of social interactivity and a means of promoting social status. It is important to differentiate between physical and digital sticker collections because the latter is alive and kicking. Today’s children might not care for—or even remember—the sticker craze of the 80s and 90s, but they are proving that digital archives of stickers are an important way for expressing themselves to the public. Like the 11 year old girl who prominently displayed her collection on folders and binders for all to see, Facebook users are interested in revealing their collections on public profile pages right next to their digital photo albums. There’s a progression here that must be noted. The original collectors of the 80s and 90s preferred to privately store their stickers inside scrapbooks to protect them from dust and dirt. As the craze quickly turned into a fad the in-between generation of collectors liked to bring their collections into the public sphere. And now as the fad has all but died the digital age has rebooted the craze and entirely public collections of Bumper Stickers have taken over.</div>Ekm289