6. Lost Places

Like individuals, cultures have memories which produce worlds which, as Pavel writes "often derive from older, discarded models" (141). The gods of the Greeks and the Romans, he tells us "performed this function till late in the history of European culture" (141). For the Romantics of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Middle Ages fulfilled a similar but much more vital, and ultimately less than marginal, role. As Robert Bartlett has noted "by the middle of the nineteenth century, the medieval revival had fundamentally refashioned European art, literature and architecture" (16). Romanticism (re)created the Middle Ages to suit its own privileging of "emotion and mystery, local colour and popular speech, the simple and the natural" (13) and was itself, Bartlett suggests, "generated" (16) by the Industrial Revolution. Like Jeamland and the City, Bartlett sees the Middle Ages of the Romantic imagination as a world produced out of trauma:

Industrialization was one of the deepest breaks with the past that Europeans had ever encountered, representing a far more profound rupture than even the most important political changes, such as the fall of the Roman Empire, or religious changes such as the Reformation. (16)

In STRAW MEN (2002, written as Michael Marshall) the titular organisation –a kind of terrorist organisation based in present day America but operating globally – attempts to materialise their own version of a lost golden age, when all humans were hunter-gatherers (229-235). For the Straw Men, humanity has become infected with "the Virus" which "made us start living in groups and towns precisely because it would be easier for it to SPREAD AMONGST US" (233, sic). The Straw Men see the modern world as an "Evil environment" in which politicians "thrive" (235). Their response, therefore, is to advocate the overthrow of all governments, the abandonment of cities and the return to a kind of state of nature in which everyone is "free" and "the Virus" is defeated.

The Straw Men construct their own Neighbourhood, their own "pure community" The Halls.  The ultimate gated community, The Halls, like Celebration is themed: its architects have interpreted the architectural styles of Frank Lloyd Wright as being consistent with their own ideology of purity; as Ward puts it "[t]hey're making million dollar caves for hunter-gatherers" (238). Moreover, The Halls is the Straw Men's global headquarters from which they – specifically Paul – orchestrate acts of violence around the globe – bombings, serial murders, spree shootings – in an attempt to destabilise society. The Straw Men have, as John Gray has written about Al Qaeda, "successfully privatised terror and projected it worldwide" (175). Gray uses the term "privatised" because he considers Al Qaeda to be "more like a postmodern corporation than an old-fashioned army" (175). It is postmodern because it does not belong to any state but instead "exploit[s] the weakness of states" (175). Similarly, the Straw Men have become a "'postmodern'" organisation serving "'premodern' values" (176).

Like Al Qaeda, the Straw Men exploit Western technology to "repudiate Western modernity" (175). This is what Gray calls the "chaotic drift of technologies" (175) Organisations like the Straw Men or Al Qaeda recontextualise technology. As Shaviro remarks, "[t]he potential of [ . . . ] a technology, or of a machine is always far greater than its official function or its ostensible purpose" (248). In THE STRAW MEN, Ward speculates about "a whole other Web, using the same computers and the same phone lines and hard disks, full of killers and killing and a plan for the future" (237). In network terms, what Ward describes is a "community of interest", an association of like-minded but not necessarily geographically proximate individuals or organisations. Such communities pre-date the Internet but have flourished with it. As Shaviro writes, using Marshall McLuhan's categories of "hot" and "cool" media, the Internet is "even cooler than television" (6). "Cool" media promote intimacy and while the Internet is a "many-to-many medium whereas TV is only one-to-many" (6), the specialist nature of websites creates the perfect environment for criminal activities to be discussed and planned. Ward sees the Internet not only as an extension of human beings, but also as an expression of human nature:

That's what we're like. Don't you know that? Academics created the Net in their spare time so they could trade facts and while away tenure role-playing STAR TREK. Next thing you know you can't log on without people spamming you to death [ . . . ] Even before that it's wall-to-wall pornography and ordinary men and women sitting in darkened rooms telling each other how they'd like to dress up like Shirley Temple and be whipped until they bleed. That's what the Net will become – a way of hiding behind anonymity so you can stop pretending you're Mr. and Mrs. Good Neighbour and be who you really are: so we can stop pretending we give a shit about some global village . . . (237-8)

The Straw Men's project is both euchronian (they long for a time before "the Virus") and eutopian – that is, constructed around the desire for a better place – (the pre-Viral time is also pre-urban). The Halls recreates this time and place just as Celebration recreates the physical and historical state of "innocence" that is (mythical) pre-1960s small town America.

In  'Approaching the Radical Other: The Discursive Culture of Cyberhate' (in Jones, 1998) Susan Zickmund identifies two categories for the despised found in the discourse of radical groups: "social contaminant" and "conspirator". In the first category, the Other "metaphorically becomes a cultural disease", lepers or plague carriers in Foucault's sense, who threaten the purity and hygiene of the uninfected; in the second "issues of power, wealth and control predominate" (192 and 195). For the Straw Men virtually everyone is the Other, because virtually everyone is infected with "the Virus". Politicians and those who are "in it for the MONEY" (233, sic) are also "conspirators" because they "thrive" in the contaminated "Evil environment" (235, sic). According to Zickmund:

Closed communities live in hermetic isolation and may serve as breeding grounds for extremism with all its physical threats. The openness of cyberspace does not offer such seclusion. The Internet may thus endanger the very notion of closed community. (204)

7. Lonely Places

The Internet and cyberspace are frequently described as a "body-less" environment, although, as Shaviro points out, "[w]eb surfing is a physical, tactile experience" which "solicits my entire body" (6). Nevertheless, current technology facilitates only a certain degree of interaction with others; the only physicality we can immediately experience is our own. That is not to say, however, that there are not bodies on the Internet. Discussing Jennicam, a website which constantly records – and provides free access to – a young American woman's home life, Shaviro writes that the pictures "are intimate, but not revealing" because "[t]hey show me everything but tell me nothing" ('Stranded'). All Shaviro, or anybody else who accesses Jennicam, can do is watch. Her "body is online, while her mind is not", which is "the opposite of what they usually say about cyberspace": Shaviro concludes, "Jenni's real life is open to me. But her virtual life remains a mystery" ('Stranded').

In THE LONELY DEAD (2004, written as Michael Marshall), the characters Jean and Jessica are "Cam whores" (103), that is, they receive payment for offering a similar experience to the Jennicam, with the exception that they are always at least partially naked while on camera. Users of their sites  (subscribers) are able to contact the "cam-whores" via e-mail with comments and suggestions. Of Jessica, Jean says, "She didn't go out of her way to entertain [ . . . ] Most of the girls perform". (106) As a result, Jessica does not have many subscribers. However, in Jean's own experience not performing can also be popular. On one occasion she "just plain forgot about the camera and got on with her life like a normal person" with the result that she receives numerous e-mails "wowing her for such 'great teasing'" (104).

"It is Intermittence," Roland Barthes writes "which is erotic [ . . . ] the intermittence of skin flashing between two articles of clothing (trousers and sweater), between two edges (the open-necked shirt, the glove and the sleeve); it is this flash itself which seduces, or rather: the staging of an appearance-as-disappearance" (75). Or, in Jean's case, the intermittence between a period of her being clothed and the expected display of nudity. Of course, usually this teasing does not last for such a long period but this is due to the narrative conventions of typical erotic performance. Jean, who is distracted by the "lots of shit going down" in her real life forgets that there is even a performance to give and instead behaves "normally". In this way, she resembles the "method prostitutes" in ONE OF US of whom Hap says, "the nurses carry catheters, the meter maids give you tickets enforceable by law, and the schoolgirls like terrible bands and always come straight from an argument with their mothers" (51). Jean's subscribers don't complain when she behaves "like a normal person", as opposed to a "cam whore" because, as far as they are concerned, the performance has not been disrupted. And in a way they are right: Jean continues to perform in the sense that she continues to displayherself. By allowing a camera into their lives both Jean and Jenni become involved in a performance of reality, regardless of whether they play to the camera or not. Like the dancers advertised by strip clubs, their appeal is that they are "live girls".

Greg McCain, one of Jessica's subscribers, understands that "the period through which you wait for an update [of the image] charges the scene with anticipation" (2004: 171). Greg appreciates intermittence, although he experiences it differently from Jean's viewers. He sets his webcam to update images of Jessica every two minutes rather than at the quicker rate "which is supposed to make the experience more real" because for him that slower rate "has exactly the opposite effect" (171):

A scene updated every twenty seconds [ . . . ] implies that what is missing is not important. But it is important. The reality of the original is lost in those infinitesimal omissions. If you cut the gaps back to a minute or two, however, something changes. What's missing seems to swell, giving the images more weight, making them pregnant with duration

As with the Jennicam, Greg has access only to Jessica's body, not her mind. Which is precisely what he wants:

That is the beauty of this webcam, of all webcams, of the internet itself – of our world as it has become. You can observe, and interpret, or just let the images welter there in front of your eyes, until you've had enough [ . . . ] It is someone else's life, someone else's problem. You are safe from it. (173)

Ward Hopkins, in THE LONELY DEAD, comments on Greg's use of Jessica's site which he sees as similar to his own online viewing of "nondescript" locations (188):

You didn't watch it in the hope of seeing something exciting. Just the opposite. You watched because   the very lack of discernible activity, or presented subject matter, made the view itself seem more real.

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David Sweeney is a graduate of the University of Glasgow (www.gla.ac.uk) and Glasgow School of Art (www.gsa.ac.uk), where he is currently studying for a Ph.D researching the production of fictional worlds. He thinks both places are great.

The above notes were written in the first year of David's research – so please don't judge them too harshly – and will form part of his final thesis due to be submitted at the end of the year.

Another article by David on the production of licensed fiction can be found here (http://www.iamtw.org/art_licensedfiction.html) and, if you feel like it, you can e-mail him here: davidsweeney3@hotmail.com