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Background Despite being a common overuse entity in youth soccer, scientific data on risk factors, rehabilitation and return to play for long-standing pubic-related groin pain is still rare. The current prospective cohort study aims to evaluate potential risk-factors, propose a criteria-based conservative rehabilitation protocol and assess return-to-play outcomes among professional youth soccer players suffering from long-standing pubic-related groin pain. Methods Male soccer players with long-standing (> 6 weeks) pubic-related groin pain from a professional soccer club’s youth academy were analyzed for possible risk factors such as age, team (U12 - U23), younger/older age group within the team, position and preinjury Functional movement score. All injured players received a conservative, standardized, supervised, criteria-based, 6-level rehabilitation program. Outcome measures included time to return to play, recurrent groin pain in the follow-up period and clinical results at final follow-up two years after their return to play. Results A total of 14 out of 189 players developed long-standing pubic-related groin pain in the 2017/2018 season (incidence 7.4%). The average age of the players at the time of the injury was 16.1 ± 1.9 years. Risk factor analysis revealed a significant influence of the age group within the team (p = .007). Only players in the younger age group were affected by long-standing pubic-related groin pain, mainly in the first part of the season. Injured players successfully returned to play after an average period of 135.3 ± 83.9 days. Only one player experienced a recurrence of nonspecific symptoms (7.1%) within the follow-up period. The outcome at the 24-month follow-up was excellent for all 14 players. Conclusions Long-standing pubic-related groin pain is an overuse entity with a markedly high prevalence in youth soccer players, resulting in a relevant loss of time in training and match play. In particular, the youngest players in each team are at an elevated risk. Applying a criteria-based rehabilitation protocol resulted in an excellent return-to-play rate, with a very low probability of recurrence. Trial registration The trial was retrospectively registered under DRKS00016510 in the German Clinical Trials Register on 19.04.2021.

On July 14, 2019, a 3-minute 36-second video titled “Keanu Reeves Stops A ROBBERY!” was released on YouTube visual effects (VFX) channel, Corridor. The video’s click-bait title ensured it was quickly shared by users across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Comments on the video suggest that the vast majority of viewers categorised it as fiction. What seemed less universally recognised, though, was that the performer in the clip was not Keanu Reeves himself. It was voice actor and stuntman Reuben Langdon, and his face was digitally replaced with that of Reeves, through the use of an AI generated deepfake, an open access application, Faceswap, and compositing in Adobe After Effects. This article uses Corridor’s deepfake Keanu video (hereafter shorted to CDFK) as a case study which allows the fleshing out of an, as yet, under-researched area of deepfakes: the role of framing contexts in shaping how viewers evaluate, categorise, make sense of and discuss these images. This research draws on visual effects scholarship, celebrity studies, cognitive film studies, social media theory, digital rhetoric, and discourse analysis. It is intended to serve as a starting point of a larger study that will eventually map types of online manipulated media creation on a continuum from the professional to the vernacular, across different platforms, and attending to their aesthetic, ethical, cultural and reception dimensions. The focus on context (platform, creator channel, and comments) also reveals the emergence of an industrial and aesthetic category of visual effects, which I call here “platform VFX,” a key term that provides us with more nuanced frames for illuminating and analysing a range of manipulated media practices as VFX software becomes ever more accessible and lends itself to more vernacular uses, such as we see with various face swap apps.

This article reflects with affection on the work of the late Professor Tom O’Regan, in his interwoven capacities as scholar, teacher, colleague, friend, catalyst, and generous mentor to younger scholars. It attempts to convey the intellectual openness, curiosity, and conversations with others that shaped his research in Media and Cultural Studies, and to make visible the skeins of connective tissue across his many collaborations and projects. It traces the recent trajectories of his ideas from cultural discourse to policy, to audience measurement, to media platforms and algorithmic culture. It attends to his particular ability to see how seemingly disparate people, events, objects, and ideas related to each other, and to bring these elements into conversation with each other. Tom O’Regan’s desire to map interlocking systems of media, of technology, of institutions, of culture, was always geared towards an understanding of where points of intervention could best happen. I argue that his long-standing attachment to the writings of Michel Foucault and Bruno Latour did not just shape his research, but also his sense of his own role, responsibilities, and capacity to act in the service of others within the structures and networks of the contemporary Australian university.

Background Patients suffering cartilage defects of the medial compartment with underlying varus deformity do benefit from high tibial osteotomy (HTO) even in the long term. Nonetheless, kinematic and geometric changes especially in the patellofemoral joint have been described. Purpose of the present study was to evaluate the influence of patellofemoral cartilage defects detected during the diagnostic arthroscopy and their influence on HTO’s postoperative outcome. Methods Ninety patients with a mean follow-up of 10.08 ± 2.33 years after surgery were included. Patients were divided into four groups according to their cartilage status in the patellofemoral joint (A = no defects, B = isolated lesions of the patella, C = isolated lesions of the trochlea, D = kissing lesions). Functional outcome was evaluated before surgery and about ten years thereafter by relying on the IKDC, Lysholm, and KOOS scores. Radiological parameters were assessed pre- and six weeks postoperatively. Results In groups A to D, the HTO led to significant patellar distalisation in the sagittal view, with the mean indices remaining at or above the limit to a patella baja. All patients in all groups profited significantly from HTO (higher Lysholm score, lower VAS p p = 0.033) and D (Caton-Deschamps-Index—Tegner p = 0.018), a larger valgus correction was associated with lower outcome scores in group D (Lysholm p = 0.044, KOOSpain 0.028, KOOSQOL p = 0.004). Conclusion Long-term results of HTO for varus medial compartment osteoarthritis remain good to excellent even in the presence of patellofemoral defects. Overcorrection should be avoided. Distal biplanar HTO should be considered for patients presenting trochlear or kissing lesions of the patellofemoral joint. Trial registration DRKS00015733 in the German Registry of Clinical Studies.

Purpose Capsular volume reduction in the context of anterior arthroscopic shoulder stabilization represents an important but uncontrolled parameter. The aim of this study was to analyse capsular volume reduction by arthroscopic Bankart repair with an individualized capsular shift in patients with and without ligamentous hyperlaxity compared to a control group. Methods In the context of a prospective controlled study, intraoperative capsular volume measurements were performed in 32 patients with anterior shoulder instability before and after arthroscopic Bankart repair with an individualized capsular shift. The results were compared to those of a control group of 50 patients without instability. Physiological shoulder joint volumes were calculated and correlated with biometric parameters (sex, age, height, weight and BMI). Results Patients with anterior shoulder instability showed a mean preinterventional capsular volume of 35.6 ± 10.6 mL, which was found to be significantly reduced to 19.3 ± 5.4 mL following arthroscopic Bankart repair with an individualized capsular shift (relative capsular volume reduction: 45.9 ± 21.9%; P P Conclusion Arthroscopic Bankart repair with an individualized capsular shift enabled the restoration of physiological capsular volume conditions in hyperlax and non-hyperlax patients with anterior shoulder instability. Current findings allow for individual adjustment and intraoperative control of capsular volume reduction to avoid over- or under correction of the shoulder joint volume. Future clinical studies should evaluate, whether individualized approaches to arthroscopic shoulder stabilization are associated with superior clinical outcome.

Background: Good-to-excellent midterm results after high tibial osteotomy (HTO) to treat medial compartment cartilage defects or osteoarthritis (OA) have been published, but little is known about long-term survival rates in terms of conversion to total knee arthroplasty (TKA) using angular stable internal plate fixation. Purpose: To determine TKA-free survival rates and functional and radiological outcomes at 10 years after HTO. A subgroup analysis of patients who underwent combined HTO and autologous cartilage implantation (ACI) was also performed. Study Design: Case series; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: Included were 125 patients with a mean follow-up of 9.90 ± 2.25 years; 90 patients underwent HTO for medial OA, and 35 patients underwent ACI and HTO for medial focal cartilage defects. Functional outcome measures included visual analog scale (VAS) for pain, Lysholm, International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC), and Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) subscales and KOOS4 (average of 4 KOOS subscales: Pain, Symptoms, Sport, and Quality of Life). Radiological outcomes included lateral distal femoral angle, medial proximal tibial angle, and joint line convergence angle. Results: Overall, 16 patients required conversion to TKA at a mean 86.75 ± 25.73 months (10-year survival rate, 87.2%). Only 2 patients in the HTO+ACI subgroup required a conversion to TKA (10-year survival rate, 94.3%). The complication rate for all patients was 8.8%. In both the HTO and HTO+ACI subgroups, VAS pain levels decreased and Lysholm scores increased significantly from pre- to postoperatively ( P < .001). A higher preoperative Tegner score led to a significantly lower risk for conversion to TKA ( P = .001), and a preoperative body mass index of ≥35 was associated with a significantly higher risk ( P = .019), as was female sex ( P = .046). Radiological parameters remained within physiological ranges. The postoperative joint line conversion angle did correlate with postoperative functional outcome but not with TKA conversion. Conclusion: Long-term results of HTO for medial compartment OA or cartilage defects with underlying varus deformity were good to excellent. In particular, patients who underwent HTO+ACI presented excellent long-term survival rates. HTO, therefore, delays or prevents TKA implantation, especially in young, active patients with medial compartment damage.

Purpose Young and active patients suffering early degenerative changes of the medial compartment with an underlying straight-leg axis do face a therapeutical gap as unloading of the medial compartment cannot be achieved by high tibial osteotomy. Extracapsular absorbing implants were developed to close this existing therapeutical gap. Purpose of the present cadaveric biomechanical study was to compare the unloading effect of the knee joint after implantation of an extra-articular absorber system (ATLAS) in comparison to open-wedge high tibial osteotomy (OW-HTO) under physiological conditions. The hypothesis of the study was that implantation of an extra-capsular absorber results in an unloading effect comparable to the one achievable with OW-HTO. Methods Eight fresh-frozen cadaveric knees were tested under isokinetic flexion–extension motions and physiological loading using a biomechanical knee simulator. Tibiofemoral area contact and peak contact pressures were measured using pressure-sensitive film in the untreated medial compartment. The tibiofemoral superior–inferior, latero-medial translation and varus/valgus rotation were measured with a 3D tracking system Polaris. Pressures and kinematics changes were measured after native testing, ATLAS System implantation and OW-HTO (5° and 10° correction angles) performed with an angular stable internal fixator (TomoFix). Results The absorber device decreased the pressure in the medial compartment near full extension moments. Implantation of the ATLAS absorbing system according to the manufacturers’ instruction did not result in a significant unloading effect. Deviating from the surgery manual provided by the manufacturer the implantation of a larger spring size while applying varus stress before releasing the absorber resulted in a significant pressure diminution. Contact pressure decreased significantly Δ0.20 ± 0.04 MPa p = 0.044. Performing the OW-HTO in 5° correction angle resulted in significant decreased contact pressure (Δ0.25 ± 0.10 MPa, p = 0.0036) and peak contact pressure (Δ0.39 ± 0.38 MPa, p = 0.029) compared with the native test cycle. With a 10° correction angle, OW-HTO significantly decreased area contact pressure by Δ0.32 ± 0.09 MPa, p = 0.006 and peak contact pressure by Δ0.48 ± 0.12 MPa, p = 0.0654 compared to OW-HTO 5°. Surgical treatment did not result in kinematic changes regarding the superior–inferior translation of the medial joint section. A significant difference was observed for the translation towards the lateral compartment for the ATLAS system Δ1.31 ± 0.54 MPa p = 0.022 and the osteotomy Δ3.51 ± 0.92 MPa p = 0.001. Furthermore, significant shifting varus to valgus rotation of the treated knee joint was verified for HTO 5° about Δ2.97–3.69° and for HTO 10° Δ4.11–5.23° (pHTO 5 = 0.0012; pHTO 10 = 0.0007) over the entire extension cycle. Conclusion OW-HTO results in a significant unloading of the medial compartment. Implantation of an extra-capsular absorbing device did not result in a significant unloading until the implantation technique was applied against the manufacturer’s recommendation. While the clinical difficulty for young and active patients with straight-leg axis and early degenerative changes of the medial compartment persists further biomechanical research to develop sufficient unloading devices is required.

Thoracic trauma has decisive influence on the outcome of multiply-injured patients and is often associated with clavicle fractures. The affected patients are prone to lung dysfunction and multiple organ failure. A multi-center, retrospective analysis of patient records documented in the TraumaRegister DGU was performed to assess the influence of surgical stabilization of clavicle fractures in patients with thoracic trauma. A total of 3,209 patients were included in the analysis. In 1362 patients (42%) the clavicle fracture was treated operatively after 7.1 ± 5.3 days. Surgically treated patients had a significant reduction in lung failure (p = 0.013, OR = 0.74), multiple organ failure (p = 0.001, OR = 0.64), intubation time (p = 0.004; −1.81 days) and length of hospital stay (p = 0.014; −1.51 days) compared to non-operative treatment. Moreover, surgical fixation of the clavicle within five days following hospital admission significantly reduced the rates of lung failure (p = 0.01, OR = 0.62), multiple organ failure (p = 0.01, OR = 0.59) and length of hospital stay (p = 0.01; −2.1 days). Based on our results, multiply-injured patients with thoracic trauma and concomitant clavicle fracture may benefit significantly from surgical stabilization of a clavicle fracture, especially when surgery is performed within the first five days after hospital admission.

Introduction: Thoracic trauma has decisive influence on the outcome of multiply-injured patients and is often associated with clavicle fractures. The affected patients are prone to lung dysfunction and multiple organ failure. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of surgical stabilization of clavicle fractures in patients with thoracic trauma on specific outcome parameters. Methods: A multi-center, retrospective analysis of patient records documented in the TraumaRegister DGU® between 2009 and 2015 was performed. The inclusion criteria were multiply-injured patients with thoracic trauma and associated clavicle fracture, maximum AIS severity ≥ 3 and admission to the intensive care unit. The influence of operative vs. non-operative clavicular fracture treatment and timing of surgery on lung failure, multiple organ failure, sepsis, length of ICU stay, intubation time and length of hospital stay was assessed by regression analysis. Results: A total of 3,209 patients were included in the analysis. In 1,362 patients (42%) the clavicle fracture was treated operatively after 7.1 ± 5.3 days. Surgically treated patients had a significant reduction in lung failure (p = 0.013, OR = 0.74), multiple organ failure (p = 0.001, OR = 0.64), intubation time (p = 0.004; -1.81 days) and length of hospital stay (p = 0.014; -1.51 days) compared to non-operative treatment. Moreover, surgical fixation of the clavicle within five days following hospital admission significantly reduced the rates of lung failure (p = 0.01, OR = 0.62), multiple organ failure (p = 0.01, OR = 0.59) and length of hospital stay (p = 0.01; -2.1 days). Conclusions: Based on our results, multiply-injured patients with thoracic trauma and concomitant clavicle fracture seem to benefit significantly from surgical stabilization of a clavicle fracture, especially when surgery is performed within the first five days after hospital admission.

Introduction: Varus deformity is a well-known risk factor for focal cartilage defects and even medial osteoarthritis of the knee due to increase of medial compartment peak pressure. High tibial osteotomy using angular-stable implants is an effective and standardized method unloading the medial compartment and resulting in pain reduction and excellent clinical follow-up. Until now only mid-term results have been published and little is known concerning conversion to total knee arthroplasty (TKA). Purpose of the present study is to examine long-term results with special focus on TKA convesion. Hypotheses: HTO results in good to excellent results in terms of functional outcome and TKA conversion even after ten years. Methods: All patients aged 18 – 65 years and treated with HTO due to focal cartilage lesions of the medial compartment or medial gonarthritis with underlying varus deformity between 01.01.2004 and 31.12.2013, were included in the present study. Lysholm score and visualized analog scale (VAS) were obtained pre- and postoperatively while Knee Osteoarthritis and Outcome Sccore (KOOS) and IKDC and TKA conversion rate were obtained postoperatively only. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS Software 24.0 (IBM Corp. Armonk, USA). Results: 125 patients with a mean age of 44,4 +- 10,17 (Range 18,9 - 66,9) years were included in the present study. Mean follow-up (FU) was 118,4 +- 27,3 (Range 73,0 - 171) months. Lysholm score and VAS significantly improved at FU in comparison to preoperative valus. Patients presented good functional outcom even after ten years (KOOSpain 82,9 +- 14,4; KOOS symp 78,6+-17,6, KOOS adl 87,8+-13,3; KOOSsport 53,1+#30,4; KOOSQOL 70,2+-21,4;KOOS4 71,2+-18,2). Patients requiered TKA conversion in 12.8%, resulting in 87.2% TKA free survival-rates ten years after HTO implantation. Conclusion: HTO is a safe and effective method resulting in good functional outcome and low conversion rates to TKA even after ten years.

Bode compares the very different afterlives of two major Hollywood film stars, Rudolph Valentino (d. 1926) and Wallace Reid (d. 1923) in the 1920s and 1930s. Seeking to understand why Valentino remained famous for decades after his death while Reid was forgotten by the mid 1930s, she traces the fortunes of their respective film revivals and the shifting contexts in which fan magazines mentioned them over the years. She shows that while the studios refused to reissue Reid’s films in the 1920s due to his scandalous death, Valentino’s were quickly revived and, in the mid 1930s, accrued an erotic and camp cult status. Bode concludes that Valentino’s and Reid’s afterlives were ultimately determined by how each star’s death and screen persona served Hollywood’s cultural memory.

Some Hollywood stars are more immortal than others, but how can we understand the processes of posthumous fame? Focusing on some stars who died in the 1920s and 30s, I offer here some brief observations on the interests and processes that shape how the afterlives of classic Hollywood stars fade in and out of view.

Reviews of Twilight (2008), Catherine Hardwicke's enormously popular screen adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's teen vampire romance novel, reveal a focus on both the gender and age of the film's audience. The teen, tween or adolescent girl, her tastes and affective response, are evoked in different ways by many reviewers to denigrate the film. However, the adolescent girl is also used in positive reviews to legitimate Twilight and its pleasures. This article asks: what can the adolescent girl, her different connotations, and the ways reviewers position themselves in relation to this figure, reveal about Twilight's cultural resonance, and the ongoing dynamics of distinction in the contemporary cultural field more broadly?

This paper offers a historical inquiry into industry worries about incredulous viewers, prompted by the persistence of claims by prominent contemporary film industry figures that computer-generated imagery (CGI) is intrinsically detrimental to cinematic realism and is eroding viewer immersion in screen fiction. Examining a range of fan and trade magazines from the 1910s and 1920s, I find evidence of an earlier anxiety in the film industry about incredulous viewers. This anxiety, however, was blamed not on the intrinsic unreality of cinematic tricks but a broader film culture, including fake actuality films and journalistic revelations of filmmaking secrets. I show that the industry made a concerted effort to manage such viewership by cultivating uncertainty about the reality or artifice of what appeared on the screen. Finally, moving back to the present, I argue that CGI is not inherently less real. Rather, a broader viewing culture of incredulity has reemerged due to a combination of production publicity, cult viewing of bad cinema, online forums, editorial photoshopping, and image hoaxes.

Screen performances are always technologically mediated, recorded in fragments, and recomposed, usually to create a coherent character. But performances can also be created after an actor’s death by digitally grafting an image of his or her face onto a body double or otherwise recontextualizing elements of the actor’s work. To what extent do digitally enabled posthumous “performances” represent a transformation, violation, or continuation of our conceptions of screen acting and performer presence?

This article examines and compares a couple of moments of fleeting strangeness punctuating the history of the cultural reception of moving image technologies. Maxim Gorky read the early cinematographic image in terms of ‘cursed grey shadows’ (1896), while recent reviewers of Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) have rendered the film’s computer-generated cast as cadavers, dummies, dolls and silicon-skinned mannequins. This article argues that it is not merely the image’s unfamiliar and new aesthetics that evoke the uncanny. Rather the image is received within a cultural framework where its perceived strangeness speaks allegorically of what it means to be ‘human’ at that historical moment.

The doppelgänger (literally ‘double-goer’) of 18th and 19th century European literature and lore is a sinister likeness that dogs and shadows a protagonist heralding their death or descent into madness – a ‘spectral presentiment of disaster’ (Schwartz 84). Recently the term ‘digital doppelgänger’ has been adopted by the English-speaking entertainment and technology press to refer to a digital image of an actor or performer; whether that image is a computer-generated wire-frame model, an amalgamation of old film footage and artistry, or a three dimensional laser scan of the face and body’s topography. (Magid, Chimielewski) This paper examines some of the implications of this term and its linkage to a set of anxieties about the relationship between the self and its image. According to Friedrich Kittler, media of recording and storing bodily data are central to how many of us imagine identity today. Technologies such as photography and film ushered in a ‘technological rechristening of the soul’ (149). Kittler contends that these image technologies have had an impact on identity by creating ‘mechanised likenesses [that] roam the databanks that store bodies’ (96). In this context the use of the term ‘digital doppelgänger’ suggests some kind of perceived disruption to the way identity and image, or original and copy, relate. For example, a short article in Variety, ‘Garner finds viewing her digital doppelgänger surreal’, promotes the release of the videogame version of the television show Alias. But instead of the usual emphasis on the entertainment value of the game and its potential to extend the pleasures of the televisual text, this blurb focuses on the uncanniness of an encounter between the show’s lead, Jennifer Garner, and the digitally animated game character modelled from her features (Fritz 2003). An actor’s digital likeness can be made to perform actions that are beyond the will or physicality of the actor themselves. Such images have a variety of uses. In action cinema the digital likeness often replaces the actor’s stunt double, removing much of the risk previously borne by the human body in filming explosions, car chases and acrobatic leaps. Through its multiplication or manipulation the digital doppelgänger can expand the performative limits of the actor’s body and face. These figures also have an important role in video game versions of popular action or science fiction films such as the Wachowski brothers’ Matrix trilogy. The digital doppelgänger therefore extends the capabilities of the human performer’s image, bestowing ‘superhuman’ qualities and granting it entry to interactive media forms. The most serendipitous use of these images, however, is in the completion of films where an actor has died in mid-production, as when, for instance, Oliver Reed famously passed on during the filming of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. In such cases the image literally substitutes for the once-living; its digitally animated gestures and expressions filling in for an inanimate body that can express and gesture no longer and never will again. The history of doppelgängers and doubles, you see, is intimately bound up with human mortality and the origins of image making. According to Otto Rank, the earliest connotations of the double in Indo-European lore were benign, entailing the immortality of the self. This incarnation stems from animistic beliefs in the manifestation of the soul in shadows, reflections and images (49-77) and is intimately connected to the magical origins of figurative representation. Andre Bazin argues that the most enduring form of image magic has been that concerned with rendering the subject immortal. In his essay ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’, he emphasises that the basic psychological impulse beneath the origins of the plastic arts was a desire to snatch mortal things from the indifferent flow of time – to cheat death through the creation of a substitute, a double, for the living body (9). However, by the post-Enlightenment era, Western belief in the preservative powers of the double had eroded, and subsequently, the meaning of this figure in folktales and literature came to be inverted. The double or doppelgänger became a spectral projection of the self, an ‘uncanny harbinger of death’ (Freud 324-5). Meanwhile, even as the haunted image persists as a motif in short stories, novels and film, rationally: No one believes any longer in the ontological identity of model and image, but all are agreed that the image helps us to remember the subject and to preserve him from a second spiritual death (Bazin 9). Photographic and filmic images have aided Western cultures in keeping the dead in view, saving them from being totally forgotten. These images are filled in or animated by the subjective memory of the viewer. The digital likeness, however, is birthed in a computer and made to gesture in the performer’s stead, promising not just a ‘technological rechristening of the soul’, but the possibility of future career resurrection. Ron Magid reports: Cyberware president David Addleman is hopeful that all stars will eventually stockpile their data, like the suspended bodies in Coma, just waiting for the day when technology will resurrect them for as yet undreamed-of projects. (Magid) This reference to the 1970s horror film, Coma, with its connotations of lifeless bodies and sinister scientific procedures, brings to mind unconscious forms, zombies awaiting resurrection, an actor’s image as puppet, a mindless figure forced to gesture at the control of another. These are fears of decorporealised detachment from one’s own likeness. It is a fear of the image being in exile from its referent, being endowed with the semblance of life though digital processes. In this fear we can hear the echoes of earlier anxieties about the double. But these fears also revisit earlier responses to the cinematic recording of the human image, ones that now may seem quaint to us in a culture where people fantasise of becoming media celebrities and indeed queue in their thousands for the chance. To put this into some historical perspective, it is worth noting how the figure of the double played a part in some responses to then new cinema technologies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yuri Tsivian writes of the unease expressed in the early 1900s by Russian performers when encountering their own moving image on screen. For some the root of their discomfort was a belief that encountering their projected moving image would play havoc with their own internal self-image. For others, their unease was compounded by non-standardised projection speeds. Until the mid to late 1910s both camera and projector were cranked by hand. It was common for a projectionist to lend some haste to the action on the screen in order to finish work at the auditorium early. Early Russian writers on film were well aware of the projectionist’s role in transforming ‘calm fluent gesture’ into a ‘jerky convulsive twitch’, and making the ‘actors gesture like puppets’ (cited in Tsivian 53-54). Luigi Pirandello’s novel Shoot! from 1916 dealt with a cinema actress traumatised by the sight of her own ‘altered and disordered’ screen image (59-60). A playwright, Pirandello condemned the new media as reducing the craft of the living, breathing stage-actor to an insubstantial flickering phantom, a ‘dumb image’ subtracted from a moment of live action before the camera (105-6). Walter Benjamin refers to Pirandello’s novel in ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, recognising it as one of the first discourses on the relationship between the actor and their screen image. For Benjamin the screen actor is in exile from their image. He or she sends out his or her shadow to face the public and this decorporealised shadow heralds a diminishment of presence and aura for the audience (222). Benjamin suggests that in compensation for this diminishment of presence, the film industry ‘responds to the shrivelling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the “personality” outside the studio’ (224). The development of star-image discourse and celebrity works to collapse the split between person and decorporealised shadow, enveloping the two in the electrified glow of interconnected texts such as roles, studio publicity, glamour photography, interviews, and gossip. Star personality, celebrity scandal and gossip discourse have smoothed over this early unease, as have (importantly) the sheer ubiquity and democracy of mediated self-images. The mundane culture of home video has banished this sense of dark magic at work from the appearance of our own faces on screens. In the context of these arguments it remains to be seen what impact the ‘digital doppelgänger’ will have on notions of public identity and stardom, concepts of cinematic performance and media immortality. Further research is also required in order to uncover the implications of the digital double for the image cultures of indigenous peoples or for cinema industries such as Bollywood. As for the term ‘digital doppelgänger’ itself, perhaps with ubiquity and overuse, its older and more sinister connotations will be gradually papered over and forgotten. The term ‘doppelgänger’ suggests a copy that threatens its original with usurpation, but it may be that the digital doppelgänger functions in a not dissimilar way to the waxwork models at Madame Tussauds – as a confirmation of a celebrity’s place in the media galaxy, wholly reliant on the original star for its meaning and very existence. References Bazin, A. “The Ontology of the Photographic Image.” What is Cinema? Ed./Trans. Hugh Gray. Berkeley & London: U of California P, 1967. 9-16. Benjamin, W. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. London: Fonatan, 1992. 211-44. Chimielewski, D. “Meet Sunny’s Digital Doppelganger.” The Age (5 January 2005). http://www.theage.com.au/news/Film/Meet-Sunnys-digital-doppelganger/2005/01/04/1104601340883.html>. Freud, S. “The ‘Uncanny.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. Ed. James Strachey, Anna Freud et al. Vol. xvii (1917-19). London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1955. 219-52. Fritz, B. “Garner Finds Viewing Her Digital Doppelganger Surreal.” Variety (27 August 2003). http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=upsell_article&articleID=VR1117891622&cs=1>. Kittler, F. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Trans. and intro. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz. Stanford, California: Stanford UP, 1999. Magid, R. “New Media: Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Wired News (March 1998). http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,10645,00.html>. Parisi, P. “Silicon Stars: The New Hollywood.” Wired (December 1995): 144-5, 202-10. http:www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,10645,00.html>. Pirandello, L. Shoot! (Si Gira) The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematographer Operator. Trans. C.F. Scott Moncrieff. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co.,1926. Rank, O. The Double: A Psychoanalytical Study. Trans./ed. Harry Tucker, Jr. North Carolina: U of North Carolina P, 1971. Schwartz, H. The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles. New York: Zone, 1996. Tsivian, Y. Early Russian Cinema and Its Cultural Reception. Trans. A. Bodger. Ed. R. Taylor. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1998. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Bode, Lisa. "Digital Doppelgängers." M/C Journal 8.3 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> . APA Style Bode, L. (Jul. 2005) "Digital Doppelgängers," M/C Journal, 8(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from .