The Social Construction of Race, Part Deux

nb. I guess the wind took this week away along with all the trees of Rome so please be advised that the screening for Ava DuVernay's 13th is cancelled. We will reschedule the screening for next week. Same time (7.30pm), same place (actually it will be in GG1) on Tuesday and I will confirm in class. In the meantime, so that we don't fall behind on our schedule, please begin with the readings below as we investigate the political economy of 'black television' and look to questions of representation and power in relation to race.

This is the bulk of readings for the 'discourses of race' section of the course as we wade through it this week. 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. The Herman Gray article is also important. The other articles you can use for your papers, if relevant and/or to expand on our class discussion.

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"

This is the  '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)

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

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
 
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.

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

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 by Lee 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.

*Through Bamboozled please reflect on the mechanisms that Lee describes (through a satirical register) as well as how he narrativizes the power dynamics at work inside the (fictional) CNS network. How does he convey the conversion of aspects of African-American culture into a commodity within the context of a white-owned and controlled corporation? Also, as Delacroix is 'permitted' to move up in the corporate entertainment ladder by becoming show runner and head writer of a 'variety' show, what are the conditions that he needs to submit to? How does the white construction of black culture play into what he is being asked to conform to? In the end, what is the price that Delacroix has to pay according to Lee?
Finally, what does Spike Lee say about the way in which Mantan: The New Millenium Minstrel Show's genealogy in minstrel shows and blackface performance (along with the accumulation of historical artefacts) has become an empty gesture, a comedic ploy that removes the complexities of history and society and keeps racial hierarchies intact? What forms of contemporary popular culture do you think Spike Lee would consider to be operating through the same mechanisms today?
That's a whole lot of questions. Enjoy.

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 minstrelsy.

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 

"Beneath the cobblestones, the beach": Theory, Situationism and Cultural Resistance

Hans Magnus Enzensberger - Constituents of a Theory of the Media (1970)

Extra:
John Downing - Radical Media in Italy

Marco Tullio Giordana's I cento passi (The One Hundred Steps, 2000) will be screened on Thursday, October 11 @7.30pm in GK1.3 (Guarini Campus)

How To Talk Like A Situationist

Guy Debord - Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency's Conditions of Organization and Action (1957)

If you are interested in reading more of the Situationist International's documents, manifestos and screeds (they are always fun, engaging and inspiring) you can find an excellent selection in the anthology edited by Tom McDonough and published by MIT Press titled Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents. Modern day situationists have made the book available here. Of course all of the Situationist documents are also available online at the Situationist Online Archive which is a true treasure trove of material. There are many other sources for Situationist materials freely available online, a direct result of the 'proto-free culture' approach the Situationist International always promoted.

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

Danky & Kitchen, "Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics into Comix, 1963-1990"

(please note that the images included in these chapters are offensive, crude, anarchic and sometimes disturbing as comix are known to be; also, be aware that the files are quite big and might take a little time to load)

Fantagraphics released a 6 volume 'Complete Zap Comics'. Find a 60 page excerpt chock-full of comics by many of the artists that have graced R.Crumb's publication here in PDF format (nb. it's a big file, wait for it to load). Included are also an introduction by Crumb himself and a 'For Adult Intellectuals Only: A Zap Oral History' by Patrick Rosenkranz.

The library has the actual box set if you are interested in checking out the look and feel of those irreverent books that Crumb was selling in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco out of a baby carriage at the dawn of the hippie era.