"I want to be awake when we reach New York": Lamerica, Migration and 'Bare Life'

Gianni Amelio's Lamerica, various articles.
Manuela Gieri, "The New Italian Cinema: Restoration or Subversion?"
Michela Ardizzoni, "Redrawing The Boundaries of Italiannes: Televised Identities in the Age of Globalization"

"

Reporting, Adapting, Translating and Internationalizing Comics

Amy Kiste Nyberg, "Comics Journalism: Drawing on Words to Picture the Past in Safe Area Goradze" from Duncan& Smith (eds.), Critical Approaches To Comics: Theories and Methods

Pascal Lefèvre, "Incompatible Visual Ontologies?": The Problematic Adaptation of Drawn Images" from Gordon, Jancovich & McAllister (eds), Film and Comic Books

Kick-Ass directed by Matthew Vaughn

Kick-Ass by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr.

Roger Sabin, "International Influences" from Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels (nb. This is a large file because of the hi-res scan and many images it contains)

Diabolik n.1 (1962) by Angela and Luciana Giussani

Rank Xerox by Tamburini and Liberatore

Cinema, Postmodernism and Television

Nichetti's 'Ladri di Saponette' being broadcast on the Canale5 network: a film about the impact of commercial television as it airs on Italy's preeminent commercial network owned by Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest/Mediaset.

Millicent Marcus, "From Conscience to Hyperconsciousness: Maurizio Nichetti's The Icicle Thief"

Umberto Eco, "Make Your Own Movie"

Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society"

For context:

Umberto Eco, "A Guide to the Neo-Television of the 1980s"

Paul Ginsborg, "The Making of a Television Empire"

The clips below are from Videocracy (2009), a documentary by Erik Gandini.

Queering Texts: Popular Culture and The Oppositional Gaze

Susan Sontag, "On Camp"

Richard Dyer, "In Defense of Disco"
Richard Dyer, "Judy Garland and Gay Men"

bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze"

Alexander Doty, "There's Something Queer Here"
Bruce LaBruce, "Pee Wee Herman: The Homosexual Subtext"

Joli Jenson, "Fandom as Pathology

"I'm A Rebel"

"I Know You Are But What Am I?"

Comics and Narrative Theory

from Glyn Dillon's The Nao of Brown

Ann Miller, Narrative Theory and Bande Dessinée from Reading Bande Dessinée: Critical Approaches to French-Language Comic Strip (Intellect, 2008)
Hillary Chute, "'The Shadow of a Past Time': History and Graphic Representation in Maus"

nb. The Groensteen and Hatfield from the last post are also invaluable for thinking around your papers.

History, Memory, Terror: The Strategy of Tension

The 'angel of history' in the Taviani's Night of San Lorenzo

Some context on the 'anni di piombo' (the 'lead years'):
John Foot, "The Strategy of Tension and Terrorism: Piazza Fontana and the 'Moro Case'"
from John Foot's Italy's Divided Memory

Millicent Marcus,"The Taviani Brothers's Night of the Shooting Stars: Fascism and War Reconsidered"

For a philosophical and critical reflection on history:
Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History"

The image above is Klee's Angelus Novus the inspiration for Benjamin's image of the 'angel of history': "There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair [verweilen: a reference to Goethe’s Faust], to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm."

+ Theodor Adorno, "What Does Coming To Terms With the Past Mean?"

Medium Specificity and Representation

 Lily Allen, "Hard Out Here"

Keith Negus, "Popular Music: Between Celebration and Despair" 
Van Zoonen, "Gender, Representation and the Media"
Corea, "Racism and the American Way of Media"

Desjardins, "Cinema and Communication"
Thomas, "Myths in and About TV"
*Articles are from Downing et al (eds), Questioning The Media: A Critical Introduction (Sage, 1996)

Defined Lines, the Blurred Lines parody

Project-Unbreakable by Photographer Grace Brown 

Article on the parallels between the Blurred Lines lyrics and Project-Unbreakable here.

An Art of Tensions: Reading (*Now Improved with Paper Guideline)

Here are some articles that you are warmly advised to integrate in your papers:

Groensteen, "The Impossible Definition"
Hatfield, "An Art of Tensions"
Beaty, "Autobiography as Authenticity"

Two sample analyses of comic art and auteurs:

Hignite, "Jamie Hernandez's LOCAS"
Kannenberg, "The Comics of Chris Ware"

à la Queneau...Excercises in Style:
Madden, Excerpts from "99 Ways To Tell A Story"

from Jason, Lost Cat

Here is the prompt for your final paper and presentation.
You will find all the links as hyperlinks in the document for easy access.

Surveillance and Time: Power as Pathology

Marcus, Elio Petri's Indagine: Power as Pathology

Comics News

There's a new Marvel superhero and she's a shapeshifting Muslim teen from Jersey City.

Kamala will face struggles outside her own head, including conflicts close to home. “Her brother is extremely conservative,” Ms. Amanat said. “Her mom is paranoid that she’s going to touch a boy and get pregnant. Her father wants her to concentrate on her studies and become a doctor.” Next to those challenges, fighting supervillains may be a welcome respite.
New York Times here.

"Superhero stories are often about people who bridge two worlds, due to the trope of a “secret identity,” but Kamala’s character, as described, gives Wilson a great opportunity to tackle the “two worlds” tropes from a different angle"
The Mary Sue here.

Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis

Three excerpts from the graphic novel: Kim Wilde, The Soup and The MakeUp

The Conformist: Coming To Terms With The Past

Readings for Bertolucci's The Conformist.

Marcus, "Bertolucci's The Conformist: A Morals Charge"
Walker, "Style and Narrative in Bertolucci's The Conformist" from Cineaction #41, 1996

How To Read Comics I

 "To say that Nancy is a simple gag strip about a simple-minded snot-nosed kid is to miss the point completely. Nancy only appears to be simple at a casual glance. Like architect Mies Van Der Rohe, the simplicity is a carefully designed function of a complex amalgam of formal rules laid out by the designer. To look at Bushmiller as an architect is entirely appropriate, for Nancy is, in a sense, a blue print for a comic strip. Walls, floors, rocks, trees, ice-cream cones, motion lines, midgets and principals are carefully positioned with no need for further embellishment. And they are laid out with one purpose in mind - to get the gag across. Minimalist? Formalist? Structuralist? Cartoonist!"

Nancy 're-mixes' by James Benning.

How To Read Nancy by Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik.
Ernie Bushmiller, Selected Nancy Sunday Strips

Please keep up with the readings in the Duncan&Smith Power of Comics and start working your way through the rest of Understanding Comics. Finish Watchmen and Jimmy Corrigan.

GLBT Representation in Film and Television

Kylo-Patrick R. Hart, "Representing Gay Men on American Television"
Diane Raymond, "Popular Culture and Queer Representation: A Critical Perspective"

Susan J. Hubert, "What's Wrong With This Picture: The Politics of Ellen's Coming Out Party"
Fred Fejes, "Advertising and the Political Economy of Lesbian/Gay Identity"

Alexander Doty, "Modern Family, Glee, and the Limits of Television Liberalism" 

Happy Halloween.

and as a lead in to our next section, from The Daily Show:

and, finally a review of 12 Years A Slave by Steve McQueen from The Onion:

The Onion Reviews '12 Years A Slave'

Signs, Meaning, Power

Articles related to our discussion on signs, meaning and culture and their intersections with the construction of identity, desire and power. Enjoy.

Kellner, "Advertising and Consumer Culture"

Sut Jhally, "Image Based Culture"

Mieke Bal, Semiotics for Beginners
Scott McCloud, from Understading Comics: Chapter 2, Semiotics
Jonathan Bignell, Media Semiotics: Introduction + The Cinema

The Social Construction of Race, Part Deux

This is the bulk of readings for the 'discourses of race' section of the course as we wade through it this week and next. Please have these articles read in the order posted. Pay particular attention to Zook's article on the Fox Network as it invests that political economic perspective that is so well dramatized in Bamboozled as well as the Means-Coleman article on 'black sitcoms' which is a good example of textual analysis.

Kristal Brent Zook, "The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television"
Robin R. Means-Coleman, "Black Sitcom Portrayals"
Donald Bogle, "Workplace Dramas, Ensemble Casts 1990s Style"
Chyng Fen Sun, "Ling Woo in Historical Context: The New Face of Asian American Stereotypes on Television"

Searching for Culture, Creativity and Resistance in Comic Books II: Fans

Henry Jenkins - "Super-Powered Fans": The Many Worlds of Sand Diego Comic-Con
you can also access a copy of the Boom: A Journal of California printed version on Slideshare here.

Jeffrey A. Brown - Ethnography: Wearing One's Fandom

Brian Swafford - Critical Ethnography: The Comics Shop As Cultural Clubhouse
Joli Jenson - Fandom as Pathology
John Fiske - The Cultural Economy of Fandom

Return to the Real: New Wave Neo-Realism

Anna Magnani as Mamma Roma Città Aperta

Antonioni and Fellini, although in very different ways and with different degrees, did share an apparent obliviousness to concrete social issues and a much more evident interest in larger framing questions and issues of form. This week we are starting to investigate a number of films and filmmakers who mark a return to the concerns of realism --even though if you look at the dates to the films you will realize that all of this is happening in sync with the other more formally oriented films-- and to concrete social investigation. This 'return' however, as we will see, is certainly not a stale or naive re-proposal of neo-realism's outlook.

Viano, Mamma Roma from Pasolini: A Certain Realism
Indiana, Pasolini, Mamma Roma and La Ricotta + Pasolini Interview
Siciliano, La Ricotta + Pasolini Interview
Sitney, "New Wave Neorealism: Pasolini, Olmi and Rosi" from Vital Crises in Italian Cinema
Marcus, "Olmi's "Il Posto: Discrediting the Economic Miracle"

These are some essential readings that are, however, not required. I recommend these to anyone interested in investigating further issues of 'realism'. reality and cinema.
Barthes, "The Reality Effect"
McCabe, "Realism and the Cinema: Notes on Some Brechtian Theses"
McCabe, "Theory and Film: Principles of Realism and Pleasure"

Abercrombie, Lash & Longhurst , "Popular Representation: Recasting Realism".

Searching for Culture, Creativity and Resistance in Comic Books I: Art

Chris Ware, Panels from "Wingnutz"

Bart Beaty - "Searching for Artists in the Entertainment Empire" from Comics Versus Art

The Social Construction of Race I

This is a short, introductory article on race and the media. As we watch Spike Lee's Bamboozled and discuss the film, Ash Corea's "Racism and the American Way of Media" is a good summary of the issues raised in the film and those that you will be reading about in greater detail with the next group of articles. As a bonus, a classic article by Stuart Hall.

Ash Corea, "Racism and the American Way of Media" from Questioning the Media
Stuart Hall, "What is This 'Black' in Black Popular Culture" from Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies






Clip from the 1949 film Hollywood Varieties where actors Glenn Vernon and Edward Ryan apply blackface make-up while on stage and reminisce about 'the good ol' days' --as they say-- of ministrelsy.

Race & Gender Study Guide

After the usual wise and profound words of Father Guido which are so perfectly comforting during exam crunch times here is the much agonized for study guide:

Race and Gender

Zap! Crumb! Splat!: Underground Comix + Alternative Visions

Sabin, "Going Underground" from Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art
+
Sabin, "Alternative Visions" from Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art
(please note that the images included in this chapter are offensive, crude, anarchic and disturbing as comix are known to be)

Art, Modernism and Antonioni

Bordwell, "The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice"
from Poetics of Cinema

Godard, "Jean-Luc Godard Interviews Michelangelo Antonioni"
from Cahiers du Cinema #160, November 1964


Chatman, "Blow Up: Questioning the Seen, Questioning the Scene"
from Antonioni or, The Surface of the World

Extra Reading:
Juli Kearns, "Analysis of Antonioni's Blow-Up"
(a close reading of the film by artist Juli Kearns from the Idyllopus Press Blog)

Audiences

Ang, "The Nature of the Audience"
Gandy, "Tracking the Audience"
Meehan, "Don't Blame The Viewers"
Nussbaum, "What Would Tina Fey Do For A SoyJoy?"

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Cinema

"Woman as image, man as bearer of the look"

Otto Preminger's Laura (1944)

Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
You can also find it in html format here.

Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976)

Miley, Sinead, Two Amandas, Gender and Privilege

The whole 'affair' is too perfect for the discussions around cultural processes that we are having in class. By now, unavoidably, many of you will have followed the controversy kickstarted by Sinead O'Connor's letter to Miley Cyrus. You can find that letter here. O'Connor said that she was prompted to write to Miley Cyrus because of Cyrus's acknowledgement of the 'Nothing Compares 2U' video as one of the sources for the 'Wrecking Ball' video.

Amanda Palmer responded to O'Connor's letter and you can find a link to it and a contextualization here. 

This article from Consequence of Sound reports on Miley Cyrus' response to O'Connor's letter via Twitter. Make sure you follow the links to the source material.

Be ready to discuss what remains 'invisible' in this whole discussion. Tie it also to our discussion of masculinity/masculinities and the analysis of the Macklemore persona and videos. 

Here is a good conversation starter: 

Davey D, "From Miley to Mackelmore: The Privilege Spectrum"

The Easy Sweet Life: The Consequences of 'the Miracle'

Luisa Passerini, "Gender Relations"
Peter Bondanella's "La Dolce Vita: The Art Film Spectacular"

from Dino Risi's 'I Mostri' (1963)

Construction and Performance II: Masculinities

Eminem, Lose Yourself

Jackson Katz, "Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity: From Eminem to Clinique for Men"
Brian Locke, "Here Come The Judge: The Dancing Itos and the Televisual Construction of the Enemy Asian Male"
Gail Dines, "King Kong and the White Woman: Hustler Magazine and the Demonization of Black Masculinity"

Harold & Kumar

Media Consolidation Infographic

An up-to-date infographic on media consolidation. Use this to think through the issues of consumer sovereignty, the illusion of the market as democratic regulator, the media's role in democracy and its social function, etc. as well as the issues raised by Herman and Curran and our discussions in class.


Source: Frugal dad

Text and Context: Political Economy and Reception

Janice Radway, "Women Read The Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context"

Jan Nederveen Pitersem, "White Negroes"
David Croteau & William Hoynes, "The New Media Giants: Changing Industry Structure"
Sut Jhally, "Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture"

EXTRA READING: Stuart Hall, "Encoding-Decoding"

Opening of last year's Emmy Awards: "To men, you're womanish, to women, you're mannish."