This richly textured cultural history of Italian fascism traces the narrative path that accompanied the making of the regime and the construction of Mussolini's power. Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi reads ...fascist myths, rituals, images, and speeches as texts that tell the story of fascism. Linking Mussolini's elaboration of a new ruling style to the shaping of the regime's identity, she finds that in searching for symbolic means and forms that would represent its political novelty, fascism in fact brought itself into being, creating its own power and history.
Falasca-Zamponi argues that an aesthetically founded notion of politics guided fascist power's historical unfolding and determined the fascist regime's violent understanding of social relations, its desensitized and dehumanized claims to creation, its privileging of form over ethical norms, and ultimately its truly totalitarian nature.
Factors predicting patient acceptance of a new spectacle prescription need to be determined to make optimal prescribing decisions.
Clinicians usually prescribe for best visual acuity. However, for ...some patients, a partial change is prescribed to ease adaptation, despite providing suboptimal visual acuity. This study seeks to develop an understanding of which factors predict patient preference between spectacle prescriptions by using a retrospective analysis to compare ease of adaptation, subjective quality of distance vision and optimal distance visual acuity.
A retrospective analysis utilised a 196-patient data set in which participants wore two prescriptions, one based on the subjective refraction of an optometrist modified by judgement and one on autorefractor results modified for ease of adaptation by an algorithm. Spectacles were worn for 3 weeks each, and participants responded to questions about which prescription they preferred and their quality of distance vision and ease of adaptation (on a 0-10 scale) with each prescription. A logistic regression analysed which variables predicted whether participants responded yes or no to the question 'If you had purchased these spectacles for $100 (US$200 adjusted to 2023 value), would you be happy with them?'
There was a significant difference between the preferred and non-preferred prescriptions for the subjective quality of distance vision rating (medians 9 vs. 8; Z = -7.80,
< 0.0001) and ease of adaptation rating (medians 8 vs. 5; Z = -8.32,
< 0.0001) but the distance binocular visual acuity was not significantly different (both means = -0.09 logMAR; Z = -0.60,
= 0.55). Of all participants, 94% preferred the prescription deemed easier to adapt to but only 59% preferred the prescription with better subjective quality of distance vision and best visual acuity.
Distance visual acuity was not found to be a useful predictor of participant preference to a new prescription and is likely over-relied upon in practice. The results support the adjustment of the subjective prescription where appropriate to aid patient adaptation and comfort.
How can organizations capitalize on core stigma through spectacles? In this paper, we adopt a performativity perspective to address this question. Specifically, we analyze how an assemblage of ...different actors within and around an organization contributes to the spectacularization of stigma and thus brings a new reality into being. In this new reality, rather than stigma being concealed, it is normalized, and the organization capitalizes on it to enhance success. We focus on RuPaul's Drag Race as a stigmatized organization that has built its success through the active spectacularization of its core stigma. In our analyses, we identify three mechanisms (i.e., reiteration of transgressions, awakening of social consciousness, and language modelling) the organization strategically uses to spectacularize the transgressions associated with the social deviance of drag queens. Through these mechanisms, a new reality around the stigma of drag queens is constructed and stigma is normalized. Overall, we contribute to a better understanding of how organizations can capitalize on their core stigma through spectacularization; we also explore the role of audiences in co‐creating organizational realities around stigma.
Using Exarcheia, a neighbourhood in Athens, as our research context, we identify an oppositional atmosphere that is encouraging a major growth in anarcho-tourism to the area. We illustrate how the ...production and consumption of this unique atmosphere depends on the many grassroots initiatives and anti-authoritarian mobilisations that are predominant in Exarcheia, and how the atmosphere is being threatened by the encroachment of tourism provision. Yet, drawing on Duncombe's (2007) concepts of the ethical spectacle and transmutation, we challenge the co-optation/resistance binary to contemplate whether elements of spectacular consumption can, under specific conditions, be used as tools for progressive social change.
•Oppositional atmospheres are the outcome of bottom-up resistive initiatives.•Anarcho-tourism is a form of tourism driven by oppositional atmospheres.•Oppositional atmospheres drive tourism yet tourism can kill these atmospheres.•We problematize the co-optation/resistance binary.•We develop the concept of atmospheric transmutations.
This article analyzes how Romanian television channels, by mediatizing significant jihadist terrorist attacks that took place in the European Union between 2015 and 2016, have broadcasted ...audio-visual discursive units in the form of ”short films” that reconstruct the tension and emotion generated by these attacks. Through these short films, television channels create an additional spectacle focusing on human suffering, which adds to the regular spectacle staged during each news broadcast.
Uncorrected refractive errors (RE) are the most common cause of preventable visual Impairment (VI) in children, which if not treated in time can lead to amblyopia. VI in early childhood interferes ...with their overall development affecting their future opportunities in life. Spectacles remain the most popular and effective method for correction of RE. Children unlike adults, often don’t understand the need for wearing spectacles, thus prescribing spectacles in children becomes difficult.
Aim of this study was to find out proportion of spectacle wear non-compliance in children aged six years and below and identify factors associated with it.
The study was conducted among 115 children aged six years and below with refractive errors who were prescribed spectacle correction. Children were selected using simple random sampling.
Multivariate logistic regression was used to identify independent factors associated with spectacle wear non-compliance.
Proportion of spectacle wear non-compliance was 53.04%. Children with spectacle wear non-compliance were more likely to: belong to age of two to four years (AOR = 4.3; 95%CI: 1.3-14.3); have mother with up-to primary school education (AOR = 3.7; 95%CI: 1.2-11.7); have anisometropia (AOR = 11.1; 95%CI: 3.4-36.7). Statistically significant association was observed between spectacle wear non-compliance and child’s age, mother’s education, anisometropia, astigmatism, manifest squint, intolerance to glasses, glasses lost, glasses broken, concerned teasing and cost issues.
Children less than four years of age; with anisometropia and those whose mothers had up-to primary school education were more likely to be non-compliant to spectacle wear.
This article ‘tracks’ memes, forms of networked, pictorial/caption humour and social commentary – as well as cultural labour, through a process of value change: the ‘meme stream’. This is a process ...of incorporation of cultural resistance and labour into, and by, the dominant forces of capital that facilitate them: social media networks and their advertisers. We use Marcuse’s Repressive Tolerance alongside Debord’s Spectacle to argue that as memes move, increasing their audience as they go, they lose resonance with a dedicated audience but gain exposure with a more diffuse audience, which is detrimental to the expression of political, countercultural or socially provocative positions. We use Doge as our explanatory structural example. Our contribution is to demonstrate that the systems that allow for the flow and movement of memes reduce their expressive content, shifting them towards a template that is impotent for cultural, social or political critique.
To review existing data for the prevalence of corrected, uncorrected, and inadequately corrected refractive errors and spectacle wear in Hungary.
Data from two nationwide cross-sectional studies were ...analysed. The Rapid Assessment of Avoidable Blindness study collected population-based representative national data on the prevalence of visual impairment due to uncorrected refractive errors and spectacle coverage in 3523 people aged ≥50y (Group I). The Comprehensive Health Test Program of Hungary provided data on the use of spectacles in 80 290 people aged ≥18y (Group II).
In Group I, almost half of the survey population showed refractive errors for distant vision, about 10% of which were uncorrected (3.2% of all male participants and 5.0% of females). The distance spectacle coverage was 90.7% (91.9% in males; 90.2% in females). The proportion of inadequate distance spectacles was found to be 33.1%. Uncorrected presbyopia was found in 15.7% of participants. In all age groups (Group II), 65.4% of females and 56.0% of males used distance spectacles, and approximately 28.9% of these spectacles were found to be inappropriate for dioptric power (with 0.5 dioptres or more). The prevalence of inaccurate distance spectacles was significantly higher in older age groups (71y and above) in both sexes.
According to this population-based data, uncorrected refractive errors are not rare in Hungary. Despite recent national initiatives, further steps are required to reduce uncorrected refractive errors and associated negative effects on vision, such as avoidable visual impairment.
In order to fully grasp the spirit of our times, we need to analyse fully the contemporary relationship between spectacle and consumption: spectacular consumption and the spectacle of consumption. ...The chain of sign merchandise (Baudrillard, 1968) is simultaneously a mean and a vehicle of adherence to the productive and political system. It takes on extraordinary value from the moment it welcomes all that is non-rational in a rationalised society, as well as it embodies the anti-utilitarian aspect of a social system based solely on the logic of utilitarianism. In this sense, the cycle of spectacular consumption coincides with the consumption of bourgeois individuality, while the mass that has become public becomes the matrix in which the subject loses itself and cushions the weight of change in a way to express the impulses marginalized by the social system.
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