Construction and Performance II: Masculinity

Eminem, Lose Yourself

Jackson Katz, "Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity: From Eminem to Clinique for Men"

Gail Dines, "King Kong and the White Woman: Hustler Magazine and the Demonization of Black Masculinity"

Claire Cain Miller, "Many Ways to Be a Girl, but One Way to Be a Boy: The New Gender Rules"
from The New York Times, Sept. 14, 2018 

The 'Boom': Big Deals and the Easy Sweet Life (aka The Consequences of 'the Miracle')

Remì Fournier Lanzoni, "The Age of Neorealismo Rosa" (concentrate on pg. 28-43)
+ "The Years of Euphoria and the Commedia all'Italiana"
Paul Ginsborg, "The 'Economic Miracle', Rural Exodus and Social Transformation, 1958-1963"

Peter Bondanella, "La Dolce Vita: The Art Film Spectacular"

Luisa Passerini, "Gender Relations"

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

The Technology and the Society: A Critique of McLuhan

In order to be done with ol' Marshall (even though you're never done with him).
Raymond Williams, "The Technology and the Society" from Television: Technology and Cultural Form

Hot and Cold Media Is the Message in the Global Village of the Guttenberg Galaxy

Eisenstein Diagram

Here are the 'notes' re: the taxonomy of Hot and Cold media. Below is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 'Conference' program from 1977 where McLuhan discusses and responds to audience questions on his main theoretical ideas. If we don't get to watch and discuss this in class please watch it on your own:

That James Dean vs That Daydream Nation Look: Taylor Swift covered by Ryan Adams and Gendered Media Spaces

Here's a nice press review of the discourses surrounding the Ryan Adams/Taylor Swift operation. I've also included a few articles from the past past, mainly Taylor Swift profiles from mainstream magazines like The New Yorker and New York Magazine. Make sure you all read the Tavi Gevinson article linked to at the bottom of the post in .pdf format. I've also included a recent article from The Atlantic about authorship in pop music and the strategies used by record companies to downplay the 'outsourcing' of pop hit manufacturing. Enjoy.

Ryan Adams’s 1989 and the Vindication of Taylor Swift

Ryan Adams’s 1989 and the mansplaining of Taylor Swift

No Blank Space, Baby: Taylor Swift Is The Soul Of Ryan Adams

Ryan Adams isn’t revealing something ‘good’ about Taylor Swift’s ‘1989.’ The album was already great.

Platinum Underdog: Why Taylor Swift Is the Biggest Pop Star in the World

You Belong with Me

How Taylor Swift made teen angst into a business empire.

Taylor Swift Is Confusing

Haters Gonna Hate: Listening to Ryan Adams’s “1989”

The Reinvention of Taylor Swift

Flavorwire Interview: Talking Taylor Swift With Tavi Gevinson

JUST KIDDING, LOVE SUCKS

NOTES ON TAYLOR SWIFT

The complete version of this article by then 16-year old Tavi Gevinson published in The Believer in 2013 is below in PDF. Tavi Gevinson started the Style Rookie blog when she was 12. Rookie Mag below is a treasure of 'readings' of Tween/Teen culture from a non mainstream perspective --with all of its exhilaration and limitations.

Tavi Gevinson, JUST KIDDING

Rookie Mag 

Why must we hate the things teen girls love?

Hit Charade: Meet the bald Norwegians and other unknowns who actually create the songs that top the charts.

Beats 1 Ryan Adams interview about '1989' with Taylor Swift call in 'surprise'

Beyond Neorealism

Silvana Mangano and Doris Dowling photographed by Robert Capa on the set of Riso Amaro (1949)

Millicent Marcus, "De Santis's Bitter Rice: A neorealist hybrid"
Pierre Sorlin, "Fourth Generation: The Sweet Life" from Italian National Cinema

The Pompei scene in Rossellini's Viaggio in Italia (Voyage to Italy, 1954)

Text and Context: Political Economy and Reception

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

David Croteau & William Hoynes, "The New Media Giants: Changing Industry Structure"

EXTRA READINGS:

Stuart Hall, "Encoding-Decoding"
Sut Jhally, "Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture"

Textuality: Semiotics

To complement the other readings, here are three different discussions of 'semiotics' and semiotic analysis and their use for cultural studies and the analysis of media representations. These are not required readings if you have encountered 'media semiotics' before. I would however suggest, to those of you who are encountering 'semiotics' for the first time, to treat these readings as required readings: your work in class, your ability to grapple with the other required readings and your final project would certainly benefit from a familiarity with the concepts presented here.

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