Final Blogpost

Jon Phillips
December 15th, 2009
Hybrid Spaces and Identities in Paris and Elche
The “Les Olympiades” building in Paris, France and the home-based shoe manufacturing process taking place in Elche, Spain both blur the relatively solid border between work and home, place and geographical location (for example, city and building for Les Olympiades and factory and residential area in Elche), but more importantly dissolve the established concepts of identity in relation to these new, relatively undefined concepts.
The residents of Les Olympiades are, for the most part, political refugees from Southeast Asia who emigrated to Paris in the mid 1970s, and over time have taken over the building (among others) and transformed it into a new centralized hub of commerce and residence. What was previously a rundown low-rent building complex has now become a home and workplace for a group that defines its own cultural border by the grit and hard work of these Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, and north African refugees.
Much in the same way, the community in Elche has defined its own cultural niche focused around the decentralized concept of a shoe factory, with the entire city being generally defined by its residents employment within the shoe-making industry. The article mentions one of the primary benefits and/or reasons for this change is because of womens reluctance to have to decide between choosing to be a homemaker and dealing with the domestic issues of the living space and having to become fully dedicated to a career.
As one of the employees stated, referring to this situation, “Well, when my first daughter was born, I worked at home and I kept the baby close to me. She did not sleep very well and cried very much. So, with one foot I moved the cradle and with the other foot I sewed...”. By doing this, the line is blurred between the home space and the work space, transforming the entire city, residential areas and the places of employment, into a borderless factory-state. Indeed, there is even an entire new layer of economy that springs from this arrangement, as the various workers-from-home need intermediaries (who work for a “percentage”) to carry the raw materials to and from their homes.
Ultimately, it is the sheer uniqueness of these locations which cause them to cause any sort of conflict of cultural boundaries or preconfigured ideas of border. If there were “cities in buildings” in every city, it would simply be considered a variation on the ubiquitous Chinatowns (including the preexisting one in Paris, Belleville). If there weren't laws in place to keep factory-work out of the home, surely many factory towns like Elche would spring up all over the globe. While these cities and groups of people challenge our concepts of borders and statehood, they only do so because of their uniqueness.

In The Loop and Evolving Cultural Identity

Jon Phillips

December 2, 2009

Migration and Visual Art

'In The Loop and Evolving Cultural Identity'

In The Loop (1), a 2009 British film by Scottish writer and director Armando Iannucci (a kind-of-big-screen adaptation of his BBC show The Thick of It(2)), deals generally with a rapidly snowballing series of events by egotistical and bickering (described by one character in the film as “sweary”) politicians and their underlings, which lead to an unnecessary and wasteful war. The proceedings brings British Minister for International Development Simon Foster and a number of aides (referred to in a brief aside in the film as “Team Simon”) to Washington DC to discuss the possibility of war. The notion of identity, personal, national, cultural, or otherwise, is a concept explored extensively in the film, and Iannucci seems to be promoting the idea that in a world like the one we live in today, the concept of identity, when one is displaced to another location, is one imposed on one by those living there, rather than the other way around.

A similar idea was expressed in Guillermo Gomez-Pena's 2003 article on the Mexican border On the other side of the Mexican mirror. (3) In it, he speaks about the strong emotional reactions from the audience of his first work of performance art in the United States giving him the“painful birth in a new country... of my new identity, 'the Chicano,'” His cultural and personal identity upon migration is not defined by a combining of cultures within himself, but rather dropped upon him, rather jarringly, by the inhabitants of the new nation- a rather different viewpoint of himself than what he had maintained in Mexico and as a fresh immigrant.

Much in the same way, In the Loop treats the visiting Britons in a similar manner. Talking to the cast, Iannucci told them to “Imagine you’re going out to L.A. for the first time.” (4) Inconsequential minister Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) becomes highly important once he comes to the American political scene, his identity to those around him being transformed into a high-profile, polarizing figure (interestingly enough, he becomes the mascot for both pro-war and anti-war sides, due to a number of contradictory and meaningless words he “freestyled” during media interviews earlier on in the film). Curse spewing Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi, reprising his role from The Thick of It) could be said to practically run things in his role as spin doctor and “enforcer” in Britain, but once he comes to America he assumes quite another role, much to his chagrin. As Lt. Gen. Miller (James Gandolofini) puts it in the film, “You know, turkey, you might be a scary little poodle-fucker back there in London, but here you're nothing.”

Personal identity aside, cultural identity also plays an important role as people move from one nation to another (“hopping the pond”, as it's so often put). The inherent absurdity in attempting to keep a strong sense of a firm cultural identity is pointed out in a number of places within the film- the Britons furiously rebuking the Americans for referring to them as 'English', a rave filled with visiting foreign emissaries and White House staffers alike, but summed up most completely in the following exchange between Chris Addison and Anna Chumlsky's characters...

“Let's just agree that what happens in Washington... stays in Washington.”

“See, that doesn't really work, because I live here.”

While researching for the film, Iannucci recruited the talents of political blogger Spencer Ackerman, an American (5). Ackerman's job was to introduce Iannucci to various people he knew in government, to get a feel for the mood of mid-level American bureaucrats. As Ackerman discusses in the article, he was already a “British comedy nerd”, and well aware of who Iannucci was- diluting and erasing the lines of concrete cultural identity (American, British) and facilitating Iannucci's tour of American politics.

Identities as Multimedia Spectacle , a 2001 article by Nestor Garcio Canclini, states that

If anthropology—the social science that has studied the formation of

identities more than any other—encounters difficulties today in dealing

with transnationalization and globalization, it is because of the habit

of considering the members of a society as belonging to one homogenous

culture and, for that reason, having one distinctive and

coherent identity. (6)

Clearly, In The Loop not only demonstrates this concept within the film itself, but also in the behind-the-scenes collaboration between Americans, Britons, and more which occurred to create it as such a media artifact.

1.In The Loop, dir. Armando Iannucci, Peter Capaldi.

2009, IFC Films, BBC Films.

2.The Thick of It, dir. Armando Iannucci, Peter Capaldi.

2006-2009, BBC Two.

3. Gomez-Pena, Guillermo. “On the Other Side of the Mexican Mirror.” Ethno-Techno: Writings on performance, activism, and pedagogy. Ed. Elaine Pena. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. 5-18

4. http://www.avclub.com/articles/armando-iannucci,30736/ ,2009

5. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jul/23/armando-iannucci-in-the-loop-washington ,2009

6. Canclini, Nestor Garcia. “Identities as Multimedia Spectacle.” Consumer: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts. Trans. George Yudice. Cultural Studies of the Americas, Vol. 6. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 89-96

The Office- Television's New Engines

Jon Phillips
October 23, 2009
The Office
The original UK BBC Two version of The Office (Ricky Gervais, 2001) has been sold, in various dubbed, subtitled, or in its original forms, to over 80 countries worldwide, and remains one of the most successful British television shows of all time in this respect. Not only is the original popular, but there have been a number of franchised remakes done, each growing respectably successful in its country of origin. The show itself is a sitcom about the drudgery of office life, shot in a mockumentary style without a laugh track or studio audience.
There are currently franchised remakes of the show in The United States (The Office), France (Le Bureau), French-Canada (La Job), and Chile (La Ofis) with rumors of more to come in Russia and India (1,2) , and a very popular unlicensed German version entitled Stromberg. The ones I will be focusing on here are the two English-speaking versions of The Office, US and UK (NBC and BBC), and La Ofis (Canal 13). Clips from these variants can be seen on the blog post.
The homogenization of media by the spread of these shows is readily apparent. The pilot episode of each is practically word for word the same, with only localizations changed (or, as in the case of the Canal 13 version, translated into another language). It is easy to understand, even if one does not understand Spanish but has seen the original Ricky Gervais version, the setup and punchline, as well as the general gist of the story, for the entirety of the pilot episode of La Ofis. The characters as well, despite minor personality characteristics, are practically identical copies of one another in each- David Brent, Michael Scott, and Manuel Cerda are practically the same oafish, socially unaware boss archetype, an example of spreading the humor and characterizations involved in the original British television show throughout the world.
The similarities don't stop at character and story points- the format of the sitcom is copied to each as well. The most obvious television engine is the mockumentary format, in which the characters address the camera and are aware of their presence on television. This leads to many interesting and metafictional moments.
While for the most part, the various shows are incredibly similar, they also differentiate themselves from one another. The harsh, squirming, and oftentimes painful subliminal discomfort of the British TV show's humor (see corresponding video on blog post) didn't translate well in the States when the show was first adapted, so the humor gradually became less painful and developed an undercurrent of hope to lighten the mood. The Chilean version, as well, is adapted to its own nations style of humor. Writing in her blog (3), Renee from Buenos Aires states:
But what I love the most is that "La Ofis" is so CHILEAN! When I first heard about the show, I thought they were going to do some kind of pan-latin american thing to be aired all over the Spanish speaking world. But instead, "La Ofis" is Chileno to the core. The chilenis (estai enoja'o? No poh, no 'toy enoja'o, cachai?), the references of places and things within Santiago (the boss' minion is also a volunteer fireman in Ñuñoa whose colleague hid his walkie-talkie in a completo during the first episode), and the way Manuel is constantly making racist jokes about the Peruvian office worker.
So what can these localized, but still templated, versions of a television show teach us? The fact that the style of humor and the engines utilized transcends national boundaries and cultural borders is highly indicative of our unity as television-watching creatures. However, the fact that they needed to be adapted at all, instead of shown in their original form (the French dub of the original UK version fell flat, but when it was adapted it became well respected and popular), still shows us that we are different in many important ways.
1. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/28/2316091.htm
2. http://www.rickygervais.com/thissideofthetruth.php
3. http://rms81alreves.blogspot.com/2008/09/i-love-la-ofis.html


The Office UK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShtqquBMBTY&feature=related

The Office US
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgohZtd558Q&feature=related

La Ofis Chile
http://www.tu.tv/videos/la-ofis-1x01-the-office-chile-_1