Queering Texts: Popular Culture and LGBTQ+ Representation

Find Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's The Celluloid Closet (USA, 1996) here. 
This is required viewing for CMS 360.

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"

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

Alexander Doty, "There's Something Queer Here"
Susan Sontag, "On Camp"
Richard Dyer, "In Defense of Disco"

bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze"

Reccomended Readings:

Fred Fejes, "Advertising and the Political Economy of Lesbian/Gay Identity"
Kylo-Patrick R. Hart, "Representing Gay Men on American Television"
Bruce LaBruce, "Pee Wee Herman: The Homosexual Subtext"
Richard Dyer, "Judy Garland and Gay Men"

"I Know You Are But What Am I?"

Paul B. Preciado on the 'Rona

PAUL B. PRECIADO

LEARNING FROM THE VIRUS

Find here an earlier article by Paul B. Preciado from the outset of the Covid- 19 pandemic, "The Loser's conspiracy"

If you're interested in interesting takes on what is going on you might want to read this article bysci-fi author and literary critic Kim Stanley Robinson:

The Coronavirus Is Rewriting Our Imaginations

What felt impossible has become thinkable. The spring of 2020 is suggestive of how much, and how quickly, we can change as a civilization.

Interactivity: Is it TV?

THE GAMIFICATION OF TELEVISION? BANDERSNATCH, VIDEO GAMES, AND HUMAN-MACHINE INTERACTIONRYAN STOLDT

How ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’ Fails to Acknowledge the Rich History of Interactive Fiction (Or: Video Games Did It Better)

Black Mirror's Bandersnatch: Charlie Brooker's meta masterpiece

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Those who are working on Netflix (or streaming service shows) should look at:

Marieke Jenner, Netflix and the Re-Invention of Television

(This is a link to RedShelf which you all can register to use. JCU library also should have an e-copy of the book)

____________

Introducing Swipe Night: An Original Adventure Built for The Swipe® Feature 

Tinder swipes right on ‘Swipe Night’ by renewing it for a second season

Tinder’s interactive video series ‘Swipe Night’ is going international next year

How To Watch Television Articles

Here is the link to the articles from the 2nd edition of Mittell & Thompson's How To Watch Television.

Here you will find the readings from the 1st edition that were not included in this new one. There are still some quite useful readings.

Look at the 2nd Edition's Table of Contents here.

If you want to take a look at any of the other articles from How To Watch Television can get it on RedShelf at this link.

If you don't know RedShelf, get to know it, (sign up here) it's quite handy. Particularly in these 'Rona times since they are giving open access to most of what they have.

Music Videos Trapped in the Network: A New Aesthetic and Function?

Gina Arnold, "Why Psy? Music Video and the Global Market"
Daniel Cookney, "Vimeo Killed The Radio Star: Burial and the User-Generated Music Video"
Carol Vernallis, "YouTube Aesthetics"

More resources:
Carol Vernallis, "Music Video's Second Aesthetic?"
Carol Vernallis, "Reconfiguring Music Video: Beyonce's 'Video Phone'"

Extra Reading:
Carol Vernallis, "Viral Web Media and the Obama Campaign"

Complex TV and the Future of Narratives

Complex TV Basics

from Jason Mittell's Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling
--Chapter 1: Complexity in Context

Aymar Jean Christian, "High Maintenance and The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl: Indie TV"
from Ethan Thompson & Jason Mittell (eds), How To Watch Television; 2nd Ed. (NYU, 2020)

I will be posting episodes of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, Insecure, Atlanta, Master of None, The Show About The Show, High Maintenance (Vimeo), High Maintenance (HBO), Baskets, Horace and Pete, SKAM (Norway/Italy/US) in addition to the links below.


Article on the original SKAM that aired in Norway on public broadcaster and on social media NRK TV here.


(Blocked Trailer here.)

Find the clips from Season 4 of SKAM here. 

(nb. Final episodes are at the top of the page so you should scroll down to find earlier ones)

Below you can find the Pilot, "Why Did We Greenlight This?", for Caveh Zahedi's The Show About The Show which 'aired' on the BricTV network on YouTube. Relate this to the concept of Complex TV. We will be watching more of this show during the week.

Some career advice from Baskets College below.

Fatal Strategies & Slackers: Withdrawing or Accelerating? + Enjoy Poverty Readings

Matthias Leupold, Im Kino / In the Cinema, Part II Berlin GDR, 1983

Baudrillard, "The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media"

Additional Recommended Baudrillard Readings:
Jean Baudrillard, Requiem for the Media
Jean Baudrillard, The Implosion of Meaning in the Media from Simulacra and Simulation

The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow.

Please read the section 'Disciplines and Sciences of the Individual' in Part II, particularly the first four segments (from "The Body of the Condemned" to "Panopticism")

Foucault, "The Repressive Hypothesis" from The History of Sexuality, Vol. I

In the clip below the scene discussed in the first pages of Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism.
from Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaròn, US/UK, 2006)





ENJOY POVERTY by RENZO MARTENS 

I will be posting the link for Renzo Martens' Enjoy Poverty on Moodle.

The readings below are not part of the reading requirements but they are helpful in contextualizing and helping you come to terms with Enjoy Poverty. Please take a look at them, particularly the interview with Martens and the Susan Sontag essay on 'looking at war'.

"Enjoy Poverty: Disclosing the Political Impasse of Contemporary Art" in Art Papers

-an interview with Renzo Martens

Paul O'Kane, "Renzo Martens: Episode III" review in Third Text, 2009

T.J. Demos, "Poverty Pornography, Humanitarianism and Neo-Liberal Globalization: Notes on Some Paradoxes in Contemporary Art"

Bonus Interview from the "Africa is a Country Blog" here.

Bonus Reading:

Susan Sontag, "Looking At War/Regarding the Pain of Others"

Faster! Faster! Faster!

#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics (Srnicek & Williams)

Steven Shaviro, "What is Accelerationism?" from No Speed Limit: Three Essays on Accelerationism

Bonus:

Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation (Laboria Cuboniks)

+

What About 'Today'?

Christian Fuchs, "Participatory Web 2.0 as Ideology" from Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies

McKenzie Wark, The Hacker Manifesto

"Every single commodity you produce is a piece of your own death"
"Withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy."

Post-Rock, Subcultures Gender & Sexuality: The End of Discourses of Authenticity

At this point you should be moving forward towards completing the Garofalo textbook, here are the reading assignments for the final weeks:

On 'co-optation':
Thomas Frank's "Commodify Your Dissent" here.

On Jamaican Music:
from Dick Hebdige, Cut'n'Mix here.



On Gender:
Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie, "Rock and Sexuality"
Simon Frith, "Afterthoughts"
"Richard Dyer, "In Defense of Disco"
Find these articles here as a single PDF file.

Lindsay Zoladz, "Joni Mitchell: Fear of a Female Genius"


On 'sub-cultures':
Here are the Dick Hebdige chapters from Subculture: The Meaning of Style.
Refer back to the Punk: Attitude film screening.

The Ramones, "Rockaway Beach" Live in Rome, 1980




On sampling, music videos, remix culture and the 'postmodern turn':
Andrew Goodwin, "Sample and Hold"
E Ann Kaplan, "A Postmodern Play of the Signifier?"

Also, to clarify (or further obscure) 'postmodernism' please help yourself --in case you have not encountered it in your other studies-- to Fredric Jameson's "Postmodernism and Consumer Society"

TV After TV: Global Media Trade, Formats and Channel Branding

Brennan, "A Political Economy of Formatted Pleasures"
Torre, "Reversal of Fortune?: Hollywood Faces New Competition in Global Media Trade"
from Oren & Shahaf (eds), Global Television Formats: Understanding Television Across Borders (Routledge, 2012)

Chap.1: "Deregulation, Differentiation and Niche Targeting: The Emergence of Branding in the Cable/Satellite Era"
Chap.2: "From Channel Brands to Service Brands: US Television Enters the Digital Era"
from Catherine Johnson, Branding Television (Routledge, 2012)

Bonus Article:
"Why HBO Passed on The Walking Dead" from Mother Nature Blog.

Also, if you are interested in the intersection of technology, creativity, production practices and televisual style make sure you follow Ben Consoli's GO Creative Podcast (and Blog). You'll find episodes in the artchive where Consoli interviews the DP for House of Cards, has an in depth conversation with Shane Reynolds, a true one-man band/jack of all trades who produces, shoots and edits his work all on his own for the Travel Network, Nat Geo and others and also speaks with Chris Manley, the cinematographer and DP for Mad Men. Great insights on how network pressures and studio concerns with the bottom line all line up with technological possibilities and stylistic choices.

The 'Post' Archipelago: A Brief Intro

Young Jacques Derrida's English Comp Essay
Note the teacher's comments. Do they still apply to Jacques' adult writing? Read 'Différance' below to find out.

Some introductory readings to the various 'posts' that we will be reading in the next weeks. Having concluded our discussion of structuralism, here is some material to bring us towards the post-structuralist theoretical framework. Remember that a good exercise for us is to read the theories in their original form. As you read get a sense of the language, of the rhetorical processes, of the way the argument proceeds. I am including here, in addition to the Roland Barthes essay on "The Death of the Author" also a brief introduction to poststructuralism, postmodernism and postcolonial studies (the pdf has these entries in alphabetical order but please read them in the order above). I've also included Derrida's 'Différance' --this is a bonus reading but I would urge all of you to tackle it in order to get that sense of the language mentioned above so that we may talk about it in class. Enjoy.

"poststructuralism"; "postmodernism"; "postcolonial studies" entries
from A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory; 2nd Ed. (Wiley-Blackwell)

Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author" from Image/Music/Text

David Harvey, "Postmodernism" from The Condition of Postmodernity

Jacques Derrida, Différance

Discrete Programming, Music Video Auteurs and the End of MTV

"Inside Total Request Live: MTV's Hottest Program for Teens" from PBS Frontline, 2001

Saul Austerlitz, "Visions of a Youth Culture" + "Spike and Michel" from Money For Nothing: A History of the Music Video from The Beatles to The White Stripes (Continuum, 2008)

Roger Beebe, "Paradoxes of Pastiche: Spike Jonze, Hype Williams, and the Race of the Postmodern Auteur" from Beebe & Middleton (eds), Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones (Duke, 2007)

You can find a treasure trove of AUTEUR based organized video playlists here.

Individual auteurs are linked below. The "Spike and Michel" of Saul Austerlitz's chapter above are Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry.

Spike Jonze
Michel Gondry
Chris Cunningham

Hype Williams 
Paul Hunter

For Those About To Rock: Return of the Aura

Frank Zappa & Captain Beefheart

"I mean, man, whither goest thou? Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?"

-Jack Kerouac

-Keightley, "Reconsidering Rock"

Here are a couple of articles to integrate Keightley's Reconsidering Rock article. The first Frith article is required; the second article is a highly recommended read. Enjoy the Lester Bangs reviews from Creem. Reebee Garofalo's article on Soul ("Popular Music and the Civil Rights Movement") is required.

Simon Frith - "Rock and Popular Culture"
Simon Frith - "The Magic The Can Set You Free": The Ideology of Folk and the Myth of the Rock Community
Paul Clarke - "'A Magic Science': Rock Music as a Recording Art"
Lester Bangs - Various Record Reviews from Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
Reebee Garofalo - Popular Music and the Civil Rights Movement

Also, here is Andrew Chester's "For A Rock Aesthetic", Richard Merton's response, "Comments" and Chester's response to the response, "Second Thoughts on a Rock Aesthetic: The Band". It's all here at this link --the whole epochal exchange in one handy location.

Please read in 'Rocking Out' up to and including Chapter 8.

AC/DC, Let There Be Rock (1977) 

Reverend Bon tells you all about it. As you can see the 'aura' is back around Angus' head.

Structuralism 101

"Structuralist Theories" from Selden et al. A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, 3rd Edition (Prentice Hall, 1985)

Below are some very basic intro articles on Semiotics and the media for those that need a refresher/recap:

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

Vienna/Maid of Orleans Analysis

Ultravox, Vienna 7" (Chrysalis, 1981)

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Maid of Orleans 7" (Dindisc/Virgin, 1981) 

Paper prompt with links to the videos, here.

For easy access find the videos also linked below.

Ultravox, Vienna (Russell Mulcahy, 1981)

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Maid of Orleans (Steve Barron, 1982)