RETHINKING THE ‘TRUTH’ OF IDENTITY: DISSECTING QUEERNESS AND EMO SUBCULTURE IN NETFLIX’S THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY

Over the years, the presence of LGBTQ+ community in the media has gone through noticeable change. It is a challenge for online streaming services like Netflix to represent as many communities and subcultures as they can, because accessibility comes with more diverse audience. While many LGBTQ+ characters have been put in the spotlight, those who identify beyond binaries are still arguably underrepresented, especially the ones that belong to socially degraded subculture like emo. The Umbrella Academy is a TV show rooted in emo subculture that feature LGBTQ+ superhero characters, Klaus Hargreeves and Vanya Hargreeves, who do not fully associate with the label “gay”, “lesbian”, or “bisexual”. This study employs what Judith Butler asserts, that gender expressions and practices of desire go beyond binaries, to see how emo subculture engages queerness as rejection to rigid classification of gender identities and sexual practices, as well as a tool to oppose conservatism, especially of previous generations. The discussion reveals that contrary to the popular belief that perceives emo as the culture of straight middle-class white boys, the show perceives emo subculture through the characters’ rejection to absolute identification. The characters show rejection through clothing, behavior, mannerism, and verbal statements. The characters also show opposition to conservatism, which include traditional gender roles, traditional superhero narratives, masculine-feminine polarity, and the ‘truth’ of identity.

Assessing Proprioception in an Older Population: Reliability of a Protocol Based on Active Movement Extent Discrimination

Proprioceptive ability – the sense of where body parts are located in space - is one of many factors thought to affect falls risk among the elderly. Active movement extent discrimination is an approach to measuring proprioception that is administered in an ecologically valid testing environment to better reflect the exercise of proprioceptive skills in daily life. The Active Movement Extent Discrimination Apparatus (AMEDA) was developed to objectively measure this proprioceptive discrimination. However, the current absolute identification testing protocol is cognitively demanding, and it yields results that are insufficiently reliable to assess performance at the individual level. The objectives of this pilot study were to test the reliability and feasibility of a proposed new AMEDA testing protocol and to explore how performance related to cognitive ability and any perceived dysfunction in the foot or ankle. We tested 42 participants (aged 19 – 94 years) three times on the ankle AMEDA using a newly developed protocol that asked participants to report whether a given angle of ankle inversion was shallower or deeper than the immediately preceding inversion. Participants also completed the Stroop test, as a measure of cognitive ability, and two validated questionnaires for identifying foot or ankle dysfunction (the Cumberland Ankle Instability Tool and the Foot and Ankle Ability Measure). The proportion of correct responses for the AMEDA test showed the expected sigmoid shape of the psychometric function as signal strength increased. The intraclass correlation coefficient measured over the three tests was 0.65 (95% confidence interval: 0.49 - 0.78), suggesting moderate reliability. We found a positive and statistically significant correlation between AMEDA performance and Stroop results but no relationship between the AMEDA score and questionnaire-measured foot or ankle dysfunction. This study confirmed that the alternative testing protocol was simple to administer and easily understood by participants.

Using the Active Movement Extent Discrimination Apparatus to Test Individual Proprioception Acuity: Implications for Test Design

The Active Movement Extent Discrimination Apparatus (AMEDA) has been used for measuring proprioception at various joints in the body for more than two decades. The utility of this instrument for discriminating groups has been reported in terms of an area under the curve (AUC) derived from an absolute identification test. This metric has supported statistically significant group differences, but it is not clear whether the AMEDA’s testing protocol is suitable for measuring individual proprioception acuity changes. This study aimed to test the reliability, variance and absolute AUC scores obtained with the AMEDA with reference to other studies that have tested absolute identification acuity in other domains and the theoretical underpinnings of the testing protocol. We re-analyzed raw data from a 2013 study involving 65 people, most of whom were tested three times over two separate sessions on the ankle AMEDA by now assessing the accuracy of individual responses and calculating the sensitivity index, d’, in addition to the AUC. To assess reliability, we calculated the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and standard error of measurement (SEM) for those who completed all three tests. Fewer than 50% of presented stimuli were accurately identified and relatively poor discrimination was achieved between adjacent stimuli (in only one case was the median d’ value greater than 1). The ICC of AUC scores across the three tests was poor (0.47). The SEM was 0.04, while 90% of participants’ AUC scores fell between 0.59 and 0.76. The variation in performance at the individual level was substantial, producing a large SEM relative to the population spread of scores. We considered potential theoretical factors that may be affecting these results and concluded that an alternative approach will be needed in order for the apparatus to be used to explore individual proprioceptive performance.

Integration and Transformation: A Study of the Sun and the Moon Depicted in the Imagery of Fuxi and Nüwa

The present research focuses on the depiction of the sun and moon in the imagery of Fuxi and Nüwa during the Han and Wei-Jin periods. Through typological and iconographical approaches, it proposes four primary modes in terms of the ways in which the sun and the moon are combined with Fuxi and Nüwa. It contributes to the current field by providing new perspectives for readdressing some issues that remain underexplored. First, it challenges the over-absolute identification of the earliest representation of Fuxi and Nüwa in a pair, and that of Changyi and Xihe, another set of paired deities recorded to be in close relation to the celestial world, in Western Han mural tombs from the Luoyang area, and instead suggests a shift of focus to the recognisable distinctions in visual details, such as the chronological sequence of the application of the first and second modes in the Luoyang Han tomb paintings, and the masculine appearances of both the deities depicted in the Western Han Qianjingtou tomb. Further examinations of the development and dissemination of each mode through the Han and Wei-Jin eras reveals complicated interactions between different regions and exchanges of motif with other forms of imagery. The local tradition of depicting Fuxi and Nüwa, together with that of the depiction of the sun and moon in Nanyang, has been incorporated into the formation of the sun and moon in anthropomorphic representations in the Southwest. Finally, this research proposes that it is more significant to organise the surviving materials through the development and context of each visual element represented in the scene, rather than making an absolute identification based on scattered evidence.

Recognition of Tactile Facial Action Units by Individuals Who Are Blind and Sighted: A Comparative Study

Given that most cues exchanged during a social interaction are nonverbal (e.g., facial expressions, hand gestures, body language), individuals who are blind are at a social disadvantage compared to their sighted peers. Very little work has explored sensory augmentation in the context of social assistive aids for individuals who are blind. The purpose of this study is to explore the following questions related to visual-to-vibrotactile mapping of facial action units (the building blocks of facial expressions): (1) How well can individuals who are blind recognize tactile facial action units compared to those who are sighted? (2) How well can individuals who are blind recognize emotions from tactile facial action units compared to those who are sighted? These questions are explored in a preliminary pilot test using absolute identification tasks in which participants learn and recognize vibrotactile stimulations presented through the Haptic Chair, a custom vibrotactile display embedded on the back of a chair. Study results show that individuals who are blind are able to recognize tactile facial action units as well as those who are sighted. These results hint at the potential for tactile facial action units to augment and expand access to social interactions for individuals who are blind.