Super-villains of the "real world": the political use of the characterization of villains in Chistopher Nolan's "Dark Knight Trilogy"

It is almost a tradition that celluloid (or digital) villains are represented with some characteristics that remind us the real political enemies of the producer country of the film, or even enemies within the country according to the particular ideology that sustains the film. The case of Christopher Nolan The Dark Knight trilogy, analyzed here, is representative of this trend for two reasons. First, because it gets marked by political radicalization conducted by the US government after the attack of September 11, 2001. Secondly, because it offers a profuse gallery of villains who are outside the circle of friends as the new doctrine “either with us or against us” opened by George Bush for the XXI century. This gallery includes from the very terrorists who justify the War on Terror (Ra's al Ghul, the Joker), to the “radical left” (Bane, Talia al Ghul) including liberal politicians (Harvey Dent), and corrupt that take advantage of the softness of the law to commit crimes with impunity (Dr. Crane, the Scarecrow).

Typical reggaeton in Morocco: forms of female political affirmation throught dance

Through an ethnographic account, this text analyses how social dance may become a discourse involving the cultural affirmation of a subordinate group. It describes how a group of girls faced with a complex of outlooks that construed them as Moroccan, Muslim or unattractive —or as objects of education and intervention— responded by affirming their own culture with an unanticipated corporal discourse. The way in which looking construes bodies is explored through metaphors: a hand that touches, a chisel that sculpts, a whip that lashes and a cobweb that controls and traps bodies. Owing to this political dimension of dance, workshops can also be an oppressive and silencing tool; to prevent this, the article concludes with a series of recommendations to implement dance in social intervention processes.

Discourses on Modernization in the Employment Public Services: Towards a New Form of Governance?

The “crisis of the social issue” in the EU has led to a certain consensus in the need to renew the organizational and institutional model of public administration. The core of the reform implies important administrative changes in most of the European welfare states. Those changes are inspired on theories such as the new public management, management by objectives or partnership. Such changes involve both semantic (“sharing responsibilities”, “effective costs”, or the substitution of “citizen under an administration” by “consumer”) and political (predominance of scattered forms of power and the individualization of responsibilities) transformations which operate in the framework of individuals and State relations. The paradigms of activation and flexicurity have been central in this public administration modernization project. This commitment with new forms of governance of social issues has important consequences for the political and moral foundations of social cohesion, and the Spanish case is not an exception. This paper aims at looking at those representations of “modernization” (as they appear in debates about the employment services restructuring policies) in detail as well as providing references to the trajectory of such reforms of public services since the early eighties to the beginning of the crisis.