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