Seeing and Reading Historical Images of Insanity

In early January 2010, writes Simon Cross, I will be attending the annual Media Communication and Cultural Studies (MeCCSA) conference to be held this year at the London School of Economics. The annual get together of our subject association is an important opportunity to introduce new research ideas.

For this reason, I will use the MeCCSA conference to introduce an analytic strategy for reading historical images of madness that enables us to see that while forms and figures of madness change there are threads of continuity. My main argument is that we can only understand continuity in the visual image of madness in relation to change. I want to use this argument to show that how continuities and changes are read into historical images of madness depend on three interconnecting factors. They are: media technologies, cultural forms, and historical consciousness.

In the nineteenth century, these factors interconnected in visually significant ways when the development of photography and a changing pictorial aesthetic of madness fused with new theories of mental disorder. Through close analysis of three exemplary, historical forms of representations of madness, i.e. clinical photographs, lithograph engravings, and portraiture in oils, I want to show how they produce certain constructions of madness, with different truth-claims and forms of visual rhetoric being involved, each with attendant consequences for certain historically-based epistemological positions.

Those of you interested in pursuing these ideas more closely might be interested to read my forthcoming book, Mediating Madness: Mental Distress and Cultural Representation, to be published Palgrave Macmillan on 1 March 2010.

On the art of not asking the right political question

In this post Simon Cross examines last week's announcement that The Sun is backing David Cameron in the next General Election.

The Sun newspaper, Britain’s biggest selling national daily tabloid, last week announced that it was no longer backing Gordon Brown and the Labour Party in the next General Election (to be held by early June 2010 at the latest). The decision by The Sun about which leader and party to support in the General Election is often taken to be a huge symbolic moment in the political life and death of government.

However, it takes no great political insight to have foreseen this withdrawal of support. The Sun has been attacking Brown for a long time now. Nor should anyone give much credence to the notion that The Sun’s decision to withdraw support from Gordon Brown will actually decide the election when it comes. At best, the paper’s influence will be marginal though this does not negate the point that the paper seeks to curry influence with the likely government in waiting – look no further than Rupert Murdoch’s all too real telephone hotline to Tony Blair in the run up to the Iraq War.

But the real story here is Rupert Murdoch’s brazen attempt to set the agenda of intense anti-Brown/Labour rhetoric that will be intensified from now on. With this in mind, when I watched The Sun’s political editor Trevor Kavanagh being interviewed on BBC1’s political coverage of the Labour Party conference in Brighton. He confirmed that the central decision to switch allegiance from Labour (the paper will back David Cameron’s Conservative leadership) had been taken by Rupert Murdoch in his capacity as Sun proprietor.

Again, this is no surprise. What is a surprise however is that the interviewer viewed this admission as the end-point of the debate when it surely should have been the beginning. The next obvious question to ask Kavanagh should have been the democratic illegitimacy of an Australian-born US citizen using his privately owned newspaper in a blatant attempt to influence the outcome of a General Election of a sovereign nation of which he is not a citizen!

Why did the interviewer not ask this question? Incompetence is one answer. Poor political savvy is another. However, journalists rarely possess the intellectual rigour needed for exercising ‘joined up thinking’ and which makes for the art of asking the right question. Meanwhile, we can expect Rupert Murdoch to invite David Cameron (ala Tony Blair in 1996) to appear before his senior executives in the Cayman Islands (or wherever) and for the Etonian-educated leader of the Tory Party to drop everything to curry favour with a man who regularly pronounces hatred for the British class system. Should make for an interesting relationship over the coming years but as always these relationships are maintained far from the democratic gaze.

(photo credit: just.luc, permissions)

Toys and the Commercial Battlefield in a Time of War

Simon Cross explores the meaning of the new Ministry of Defence-approved Action Man.

Every former schoolboy of a certain age played with or coveted ‘action men’ figures. For the uninitiated out there, what are they? Well, basically, they are play figures based on the British armed forces and thus sanctioned for playing with by boys. I spent many a long hour throwing my action man around as I imagined single-handedly pulverising the Nazis (I was born in 1964 so World War 2 games were my thing). I haven’t thought about action men for a long time; until recently that is.

Why? Well, earlier this year, the first ever Ministry of Defence-approved toys went on sale. You guessed it: action men are back! These dolls-for-boys are an updated version of ‘action men’ figures based on the modern British armed forces. They now trade on their verisimilitude to the uniform and equipment of the real-life infantryman, commando and pilot (‘action women’ don’t get a look in here I’m afraid; presumably the makers view them as unappealing to their target audience of young and not so young boys).

Launched on VE (Victory in Europe) day (of course) the new action men are trying to capture (military metaphors could be rife here, but I’ll resist) the commercial environment left empty by the demise of the original action men figures in 2006 when the toy makers Hambro discontinued the product. Why are they being brought back now though?

I suggest that there is a new media-promoted mindfulness about ‘our brave boys’ fighting and dying in far flung places like Iraq and Afghanistan in relation to which Character Group, the makers of the new action men, want to exploit for their own commercial purposes. But why are they being licensed by the Ministry of Defence? What is in it for the MOD? How might we think about these toys more broadly?

Firstly, the MOD has clearly stated their optimism that the new toy will help promote the military (see The Guardian 7 May 2009, financial section, p. 28). I would want to add here that promoting the military is part of a wider strategy to garner public support for the role of the military in a time of war.

Secondly, the battle for Afghanistan and Iraq is a battle for the hearts and minds of the British public (we are beginning to see this more clearly now with every media image of dead repatriated soldiers) and I want to suggest that a small plastic figurine with officially licensed insignia forms part of an ideological struggle to legitimise war in the popular imagination at the same time as many people question its legal legitimacy.

Thirdly, war sells. From film to figurines, war is a good commercial opportunity and Character Group clearly see the potential for shifting hundreds of thousands of these figures on the back of heightened attempts to support the activites of the troops in the field. Later this year, the toy makers will be launching their villain against which the new action men can kill and kill again. It will be interesting to see who are what the villain looks like and of course the toy makers hope it will make them a killing. I want to suggest that in a time of global recession and banking crisis perhaps the villain can look like an international mercenary such as hedge fund managers and the like.

Promoting the military in a time of war is a tricky thing but looks to me like the new action men will be doing ‘their bit’. To view the new MOD action men follow this link.
(Photo credit: Pikaluk. Permissions)

Mediating Madness

Simon Cross talks about his recent work on how madness is mediated.

Well, I may as well write my first ever blog entry about my new book, Mediating Madness: Mental Distress and Public Representation. Its almost finished – though some wit recently told me that for authors, books are never finished, just abandoned. That seems somehow appropriate not least because there is always something else that you think needs to be said. Anyway, the book is no longer my baby, it has grown and grown, and now needs to stand on its own legs, for better or worse. So, within a month I’ll be delivering the manuscript to Mediating Madness to Palgrave Macmillan. So what topics will the book cover?

The six main chapters range across: The contemporary cultural politics of madness/mental distress (including the question of why I have chosen to retain the 'non-clinical' notion of madness); Reading historical images of madness: change and continuity in the image of madness; Investigative and campaigning journalism and 'suffering images' of mad folk abandoned to their fate in the asylum; The criminally insane and tabloid tales – which includes discussion of the Yorkshire Ripper case; Visualizing madness: mental illness and public representation; and Speaking of Voices: mediating public talk about mental madness and mental distress.

The reader (perhaps you?) will undertake a journey and see how mediations of madness emerge, disappear, and interleave, only to re-emerge at unexpected moments. I’ll post another blog about the book when its about to go to print. I hope you read it. If you do, please let me know what you think!
(Photo credit: howzey. Permissions.)