Author: Shinjini

The aim of this paper is to understand how users of social media and players of video game may exercise their agency with relation to Shakespeare’s presence in the digital space. The paper will focus on the essays by Stephen O’ Neill, Rebecca Bushnell, Janet H. Murray, and Gina Bloom to engage with the issue.

Stephen O’Neill has rightly pointed out in his essay, “Shakespeare and Social Media,” that the connotations of ‘Shakespeare’ extend beyond those of a playwright and a collection of plays. ‘Shakespeare’ has become a cultural phenomenon which pervades high culture, mass culture, and popular culture (275). Multiple facets of this omnipresent cultural phenomenon that is ‘Shakespeare’ are present in social media. O’Neill writes that social media disperses ‘Shakespeare’ across various digital platforms, such as, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Youtube, and so on (274). Each of these platforms create various functionalities for ‘Shakespeare’ and allows the user to approach it in different ways. While YouTube gives the user the opportunity to share amateur performances of Shakespeare, Facebook could be used to form scholarly discussion forums on Shakespeare (281). Social media accords greater agency to the users because it turns them from passive spectators to active contributors. Instead of being a passive reader of Shakespeare’s works or passive spectator of his plays, social media endows the users with the apparatuses which give way to a more active engagement with ‘Shakespeare.’ The user can exercise his/her agency by generating content in social media and then by sharing it with other users. The respondents also exercise their respective agency by articulating their reaction to the generated content by ‘liking’ it and sharing it with yet other users of social media. The users thus get interconnected in a network of generating and reacting to content by virtue of exercising their agency (275).

However, social media is unable to offer unregulated agency to the users. Each social media platform comes with its own “medium-specific attributes” which “shape the kinds of communication, connection, and participation that occur” (274). O’Neill gives the example of exchanging scholarship on Shakespeare through Twitter. He writes that Twitter is an excellent platform to publicize one’s ideas and theories and receive feedback from other scholars. But because of the ephemerality of the Tweets, important arguments often run the risk of being lost before getting noticed by other users. The user does not have any control over the technical operations of Twitter. S/he cannot make a Tweet remain longer than the platform allows it to (281). Also, if the user is choosing Twitter to share his/her argument, then s/he would have to shape it in the way ordained by the platform of Twitter. Unlike a blogpost, a Tweet cannot be longer than 140 characters. So scholarship has to be compressed within that limit and packaged accordingly. Therefore, although Twitter allows the users to generate and circulate their Shakespearean scholarship, it diminishes their agency by imposing a specific form on how the scholarship is presented to the public. Moreover, the building of scholarly communities on social media may create a certain exclusivity at times, which would reduce the agency of those who wish to enter the community but cannot or are not permitted to. For example, membership in a Facebook closed group is regulated by administrators. Therefore, even if a person is intrigued by the discussion of the group, his/her entry to the group and freedom to post to the group will be determined by the administrator. In this case, the user’s agency will be largely regulated by the discretion of the administrator. The feature of making a group ‘secret’ on Facebook also allows for interesting configurations of agency. The users of such a group enjoy the agency of making their group entirely invisible to other users of Facebook and making it accessible only to the members of that group.

Although the users enjoy the agency of generating content and responding to it on social media platforms, the fact that the content is circulated on social media has a special impact on it. If a discussion on Shakespeare is held on Facebook by renowned academics (and assuming it is also made public) and if the same discussion is held by the same scholars on an institutional/academic website, such as the MIT Shakespeare, would both of them have the same scholarly value to their respondents, even if the content is exactly the same? In my opinion, the institutional website would ascribe to the discussion more scholarly capital and authenticity. It is rather tricky to cite Twitter or Facebook in one’s scholarly essay; but it is way more acceptable to cite MIT Shakespeare. It is thus an ironical situation. It is social media which allows the user the agency to create and share content related to Shakespeare; yet the fact that it is created and circulated on social media casts doubt on the scholarly provenance of the content.

In “Hamlet” on the Holodeck Janet H. Murray discusses how the concept of agency functions in case of video-games. Most video-games have a narrative structure of going a quest or solving a puzzle. Murray opines that in a narrative structure we expect to enjoy limited agency (126). In the teleological narrative structure the narrative progresses towards a predetermined end and there is little the interlocutor can do to change its course. Yet narrative-driven video-games give the gamers the experience of or the semblance of enjoying agency. The game asks the user to make specific decisions and take specific actions which determine the future course of the game. The gamer is thus given the impression that his/her choices and actions decide the outcome of the game. Rebecca Bushnell, in “Tragic Time in Drama, Film, and Videogames,” identifies this as the authorship of the gamer, “the player is constantly offered options of speech and action, and through these a form of authorship: the power to create both plot and character” (80). Murray’s argues to the contrary. The gamer is able to make a choice or execute an action when the game prompts him/her to do so. The gamer is unable to do anything unless the game creates an opportunity for him/her. And when the gamer decides to take an action, the outcome is also pre-scripted by the game. As part of the rules of the game, the gamer remains in the state of imperfect knowledge where s/he does not know the outcome of an action, although it has already been decided in the design of the game. Here Bushnell’s query becomes pertinent: “is the player indeed free in the game, or does the game ultimately play her?” (76). The game creates an illusion of agency for the gamer. But what the gamer is actually doing is participating in the game and playing the game by the rules. Murray comments that participation is not the same as agency (128). The gamer’s agency is operational as far as whether or not s/he chooses to abide by the rules of the game. That the gamer’s agency is limited is made evident by such occasions in games where despite the best efforts of the gamer, certain unfavourable events occur. Bushnell gives the example of Heavy Rain where no matter how earnestly the gamer tries, s/he will not be able to prevent the death of a particular character (78). The death of this character is required for the progression of the game narrative and it cannot be prevented by the actions of the gamer. The gamer’s faculty to exert his/her agency is thus undermined by the teleological structure of the game narrative.

Another occasion in video-games, Murray points out, where gamers enjoy a certain amount of agency is when they decide to replay the same game as the opponent of the character they had impersonated when they had previously played the game (147). Bushnell cites a similar situation. She writes when an avatar dies in a game, the gamer can exercise his/her agency by replaying the same sequence and not making the same mistakes the next time over. This gives the gamer an impression of going back in time or undoing time (70). When the gamer plays the game from two opposing sides, the game assigns him/her different goals to achieve. The gamer not only gets the opportunity to play as the opponent but also play the game following a different trajectory toward reaching a different goal. Thus in choosing a different side or in choosing to replay the same sequence, the gamer exercises his/her agency to play the same game differently or redress the mistakes s/he had made the first time over. But again, how different this experience is going to be is already predetermined by the pre-set narrative design of the game. The consequence for each possible action of the gamer has already been interwoven in the design of the game. When the gamer is responding to certain situations in a game, taking certain actions, and confronting its consequences, s/he is authoring a certain trajectory in the game. Murray terms this ‘derivative authorship’ in which the gamer is the author of that particular performance of the game-sequence (153). It is to be distinguished from ‘originating authorship’. Murray states that originating authorship in electronic media is necessarily procedural, “it means writing the rules for the interactor’s involvement, that is, the conditions under which things will happen in response to the participant’s action” (153). Originating authorship is located in those who design the narrative of the game. When the gamer takes an action and faces the consequence, s/he is not authoring that particular game-sequence. Both the action and its consequence have been predetermined/authored by the designer of the game. What the gamer is essentially doing is exerting his/her agency to choose to take that particular action and face its corresponding consequence.
Bushnell further points out how the environment of the game exercises control over the gamer’s agency and execution of choices. The video-game environment often creates a sense of immediacy and anxiety and instigates the gamer to act on impulse rather than on rational contemplation. In such situations the gamers are likely to take irrational actions the consequences of which might turn out to be detrimental for his/her fate in the game. Bushnell gives the example of such an instantaneous reaction when in A Wolf Among Us, she harms the opponent beast. She writes that the decision to harm the beast was superfluous and hasty and was generated by rage, rather than logical discernment. As the game progresses she discovers that her action has augmented the ferocity of the beast and has made the game more difficult for her. The environment of the game, thus, manipulates the execution of the gamer’s agency and uses against him/her the power to exercise agency.

Gamers come close to sharing the authorship of the game-designers, writes Bushnell, when they approach the cheat codes hidden in the program of the game. When gamers access the deeper level of the program and manipulate it, they reach the constituent elements of the game. The craftsmanship of the game is partially revealed to the gamers through the cheat codes. When the gamer plays the game by the cheat code rather than the rules of the game, s/he tries to subvert the teleological principle of the game and author a new narrative trajectory for it. In this occasion, thus, the gamer’s agency comes close to authorship. But playing by the cheat code creates only an illusion of power and authorship rather than ascribing actual authorship to the gamers. The cheat codes are not really written by the gamers, but by the game designers. The consequence of playing by the cheat codes is also often predetermined by the designers. Playing by the cheat codes may appear as subverting the teleological structure of the game narrative, but it only makes the gamer follow an alternative teleology. What the gamer exercises is not authorship, but his/her agency to play by the cheat codes. The rest is again decided by the preordained design of the game (79).

Bushnell states that in the video-game the gamer is at once the author of his/her own performance and its spectator (81). The gamer makes his/her avatar perform in the game and watches the performance on screen. The gamer does not remain a passive spectator, but is an active participant who holds high stakes in the performance. In “Games,” Gina Bloom points out that staged games in early modern drama gave the audience lessons in participatory spectatorship (202). In case of video-games ‘participatory spectatorship’ of the audience gives way to a more active execution of power and agency, but remains restrained by the overarching telos of the game. When we take into account games designed after Shakespeare’s plays, the agency of the gamer is made doubly subservient; primarily to the narrative design of the actual Shakespearean play and secondly to the adaption of the play to the gaming platform where the Shakespearean narrative is altered by the game developers.

Works Cited

Bloom, Gina. “Games.” Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature: Early Modern Theatricality. Edited by Henry S. Turner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 189-211.

Bushnell, Rebecca. “Tragic Time and Choice in Video Games.” Tragic Time in Drama, Film, and Video Games: The Future in the Instant. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 65-86.

Murray, Janet H. “Agency.” “Hamlet” on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: MIT Press, 1997. 126-153.

O’Neill, Stephen. “Shakespeare and Social Media.” Literature Compass 12/6 (2015): 274–285.

King Lear Closing Speech  (Scan)

The textual departures between the Q1 and F versions of King Lear give occasion for intriguing readings. Nearly three hundred lines are missing from F which appear in Q1. On the other hand, F has approximately one hundred lines which are not found in Q1 (McEachern 134). The very closing of the play is riddled by the differences between Q1 and F. In Q1 the closing speech of the play (5.3.319-22) has been attributed to Albany; while in F the same has been attributed to Edgar (5.3.323-26). After Lear dies Albany warmly invites both Kent and Edgar to rule Lear’s kingdom (Q1 5.3.315-16). Kent politely refuses the offer by saying he will soon follow his master and embark upon his journey of afterlife. Kent’s speech is followed by the concluding speech of the play which is ambiguously attributed to Albany/Edgar. If the Q1 version is followed and the speech is attributed to Albany, then it signifies that Edgar remains silent to Albany’s invitation to rule the kingdom. Edgar’s silence could be interpreted as his unwillingness to accept the throne which would mean that Albany would be ruling all of Lear’s kingdom. If the F version is followed, then the closing speech of the play could be considered as Edgar’s response to Albany’s offer. In the speech, Edgar expresses his reverence for the trials and tribulations of the old and reminds the young of their duties. This could be read as an oblique articulation of his willingness to accept the throne. If the Q1 version is followed, it appears somewhat incongruous that Edgar would remain entirely silent and present no response to Albany’s offer. Even if he does not wish to accept Albany’s offer, that could have been represented in a brief speech like that of Kent, instead of the ambiguous silence which could come across as discourteous to Albany. As opposed to this, the F version appears less anomalous. It is only natural that Kent and Edgar would announce respectively their reactions to Albany’s offer. In its attribution of the speech to Edgar F implies that the righteous Edgar would assume the throne in near future. In this F provides a relatively less problematic ending to the play in comparison with the equivocal conclusion of Q1. This is possibly why Heminges and Condell amended the ending of Q1 and attributed the speech to Edgar in F.

 

Texts Cited    

Halio, Jay L., ed. The First Quarto of King Lear. By William Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. (Follows the First Folio as copy text)

McEachern, Claire, ed. King Lear. By William Shakespeare. New York: Pearson-Longman, 2005.

 

A Note on the Scanned Images

Pages 1 and 2 of the scan represents the Q1 text and page 3 of the scan represents the F text.

 

Shinjini Chattopadhyay

 

Walter Benjamin wrote “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility” during his years of exile in France from Nazi Germany. Benjamin was deeply affected by the extremely politically tumultuous situation in France. Therefore, it is only inevitable that as a response to the political turmoil he experienced and suffered, he would envision the work of art in his ongoing projects as an active political instrument. He worked on the essay from 1935 to 1939 and produced three versions. The fact that Benjamin persistently reworked the essay indicates that he was constantly analysing and re-analysing the political potential of contemporary art forms.

Benjamin begins the essay with Marx’s prognostications about capitalism. He writes that according to Marx capitalism would not only cause ruthless exploitation of the proletariat, it would also lead to the generation of conditions which would ultimately cause its own destruction. Benjamin feels that the change in the mode of production demands the formulation of new theses which would outline the propensities behind the creation of art in the transformed economic environment. The new theses of art would render fascism dysfunctional because it would diminish the importance of creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery, concepts traditionally associated with the work of art. These are the very concepts which if applied in an unrestrained manner may leave factual material susceptible to manipulation by fascism (20).

Benjamin admits that the work of art has always been reproducible. But the technological reproduction of art is something new and different (20). Benjamin identified two major manifestations of the technological reproduction of art. The first is the reproduction of any form of art using modern technological mechanisms (like photography) which profoundly affects the authenticity of the original work of art. The second is the process of technological reproduction itself as a work of art, such as the art of film (21).

Benjamin explains that the technological modes of reproduction obliterates the mark of authenticity from the work of art. Yet it is different from replicas made with hand, which are usually considered as counterfeit copies. Firstly, technological reproduction often emphasizes aspects of works of art which might not otherwise be accessible to the human senses (such as the finer details of an architecture captured in a photograph). Benjamin gives the example of films where the camera reveals what he terms as the “optical unconscious” which might usually remain beyond the reach of normal sense perceptions (37). Secondly, it can also spread the copy of the original in locations which would be unreachable by the original (for example, the recording of a musical concert can easily be circulated beyond the auditorium) (21-22). Technological reproduction often produces copies of the work of art which outlive the original work of art, thus making the physical lifespan of the actual work largely irrelevant. Benjamin perceives this as a devaluation of the “here and now” of the artwork by technological reproduction, which he terms as the decaying of the aura of the work of art. As numerous copies of the artwork are made, the unique existence of the original piece of work is overwritten by the mass existence of its innumerable replicas. Benjamin defines the aura as “a strange tissue of space and time: the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be” (23). The original work of art is marked by tradition, heritage, permanence, and uniqueness which contribute to the constitution of its aura. As opposed to this, the replica is characterized by its transitoriness and repeatability (23).

Benjamin notes that the unique value of the authentic work of art originates in ritual practices. But technological reproduction liberates the work of art from its subservience to ritual roots as making replicas in a secular setting now becomes one of the purposes behind the creation of art. Once the work of art is detached from its ritualistic roots, its social function is immediately redirected towards political goals (24-25). It is no longer defined by its ritualistic cult value, rather its exhibition value becomes its dominant feature (27).

Film, Benjamin points out, is the work of art which is identified as such entirely by its reproducibility (28). He contrasts films with Classical Greek art, such as sculptures, the technological mode of production of which did not allow for much future modifications to be executed. Therefore, the Greeks were left with little choice but to attempt to create eternal value in a single piece of art (27). As opposed to this, the technology used in making films allows the artist to make numerous modifications and improvements over time. Therefore filmmaking does not undergo the compulsion of generating eternal value (28).

For Benjamin, the most striking feature of a film is not that it replicates everyday life, but that the actor has to perform in front of a mechanical apparatus. The actor’s performance in the studio is captured by the mechanical apparatus and is replicated across multiple screens. Such replication dissolves the aura of the performance that the actor originally delivers in the studio (31).

Benjamin then goes on to distinguish between the art lover and the mass audience. The art lover closely observes the work of art in order to appreciate its innate aesthetic value. But the mass approaches art in order to seek distraction or entertainment. The art lover is thus absorbed by the work of art. On the contrary, in case of the masses, the work of art is assimilated in the mass audience (39-40). Once it is incorporated among the masses the work of art acts as an instrument of political mobilization (41).

Reaction

Benjamin’s concept of the dissolution of the aura is especially relevant for born-digital material. Works of art which originate on the digital platform are inherently replicable across various screens and devices. The distinction between an original and a copy is not tenable in this case. Whenever the work will be viewed on a device it would simultaneously stand as an original and a replica. The inability to cast a retrospective glance towards an original renders such works almost devoid of a past and makes them rooted in the present. Such works can only look forward to the future when they will be viewed over and over again on a digital screen.

It has been noted by Benjamin that the technological mode of production of the work art provides opportunities for modifications and improvements. Works of art on a digital platform can be modified whenever required. They are thus in a state of perpetual mutability. Therefore, instead of eternal beauty such works are characterized by eternal instability.

Question

Benjamin identifies the political potential of films in the context where they would be viewed collectively by the mass in a theatre. He states that in a movie theatre the reaction of the individual viewer is regulated by the type of reception generated in the mass. He draws a contrast between a film and a painting in this respect where he states that the painting is largely designed to be viewed a single person or a few. Such a distinction between the modes of viewing a film and a painting is no longer true as a consequence of modern technological innovations. Presently it is possible to watch a film privately on a laptop in the solitude of one’s bedroom. How then does private viewing create an impact on the mass appeal/reception of film? How does it change the political functioning of film?

Work Cited
Walter Benjamin. “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version.” Translated by Edmund Jephcott and Harry Zohn. In The Work of art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media. Edited by Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2008. 19-55.