Queering Texts: Popular Culture and The Oppositional Gaze

Alexander Doty, "There's Something Queer Here"

Susan Sontag, "On Camp"

Bruce LaBruce, "Pee Wee Herman: The Homosexual Subtext"

Richard Dyer, "Judy Garland and Gay Men"
Richard Dyer, "In Defense of Disco"
bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze"

"I'm A Rebel"

"I Know You Are But What Am I?"

LGBTQ+ 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" 

SEMBENE!

SEMBENE! (English version for SAA) from Galle Ceddo Projects on Vimeo.

"If Africans do not tell their own stories, Africa will soon disappear..."

For those who didn't make it to the screening last night here is a link to the Sembene! documentary. Watch it and reflect on how Sembene's project of offering an image to Africa, by an African filmmaker, about Africans and to Africans reverberates with some of the issues we have been discussing in class in regards to the power of representation and the way that power acts on modes of representation and related discursive practices. The first half of the film, up to the discussion of Camp de Thiaroye (1988) has many interesting and pertinent points in this regard.

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"
Herman Gray, "The Politics of Representation in Network Television" from Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness (University of Minnesota Press, 1995/2004)

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"

Please watch this 'incomplete sentence' vaudeville routine by Mantan Moreland & Ben Carter from the Charlie Chan movie The Scarlet Clue (Phil Rosen, 1945)

Below is Sarah Jones' 'Your Revolution' (with DJ Vadim) from Def Poetry Jam's Season 1 (2002)

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.

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Film

Stills from Otto Preminger's Laura, 1944

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

Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"

‘Men dream of women. Women dream of themselves being dreamt of. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at. -John Berger, Ways of Seeing

Jill Soloway, the creator of the TV series Transparent and the forthcoming I Love Dick (based on the Chris Kraus novel of the same title about having a crush on cultural critic and author Dick Hebdige which some of you might have read in previous classes; the pilot for the series, as is Amazon policy is available to preview, btw). This is a talk she gave on 'The Female Gaze' at the Toronto Film Festival.